How to Use the knitCompanion App

If you're someone like me that downloads a lot of patterns off the internet to knit, you might be wondering how you can read all of those patterns and work with them without having to constantly print everything out. I'm normally very much a paper and pencil person when it comes to my patterns. But recently, I've started trying the knitCompanion app, and it turns out, it's a really great way to use all your PDF knitting patterns without having to print them out. There's so many different things that you can customize within the app so that you can set up your pattern exactly how you want it. So in this video, I'm gonna show you some of the features that are used in the knitCompanion app, which is available both for Apple and for Android. So let's go ahead and take a look. So to start, I have an iPad here. That's just the device I'm using. So let's go ahead and open up that knitCompanion app. So here, when you open the knitCompanion app, you're on the Projects page, and let's go over here and click to PDFs. So here are the PDFs that I have saved onto the actual app. So these are the ones that are patterns that maybe I'm currently gonna be working on and that I want to take and set up so that I can knit them. So you'll notice up here, we have Local, Ravelry, and Dropbox. So local are the things that I have taken from somewhere else and put onto the app itself. Then you can link a Ravelry account, if you do have a Ravelry account, you can link that up and then find your pattern that you have in Ravelry to put in the app. And then also if you use Dropbox to save your patterns, you can link that right up as well. So I've already put a few of the patterns on here. And so let's go ahead and set this up. And first, we're gonna look at some of the free features of the app. So I'm gonna start by setting up this Passerine stole shawl that I have designed. So we're gonna click on that. And when I click on it, we have all the pages of the pattern right at the top. So this particular pattern has seven pages. So I can click to the different ones, and you can either use your finger or a stylus, whichever you prefer. So all my pages are all right here, and then I'm just gonna click Start Project. And when I click Start Project, a little box pops up to say Enter Project Name, and I can call this whatever I want. Let's say, I'm gonna make this as a gift for my friend, Beth. I can say Shawl for Beth. Hit Return, Create Project. And now, I've created a project. And you can see already, it's starting to look a little different. So the first thing you'll notice is that I have these two bars on the screen. We have the yellow one going across this way, and the blue one going up and down. And so you can move these however you like. So let's go ahead and click to maybe page two of the pattern here, where we have our actual directions. So you can use this yellow one however you like. Most people use it as a highlighter bar. So as you're working, you can just move it down like this, and it'll stay right there the whole time until the next time you come back to that page. So it's really great to help you keep your place in your pattern when you set your project down. This blue line, you can use for whatever you want to. Most of my self-published patterns are written such that they are in two columns. So maybe you wanna move the blue bar over to one side so you know you're on this side of the pattern. And then you could move the blue bar over to the other side to know that you're gonna be working on this side. You can really use it for whatever you want. Also, there's something really cool that's called a You Are Here marker. And I think that this one's really great. So I don't know if you are able to see it, but there's this little red, little red icon here in the corner, and that's the You Are Here marker. And all you have to do is press and hold on the screen, and it brings it right over to wherever you are pressing. So you know, okay, I'm on this increase section. Or if we go ahead and click to maybe page three, maybe you're following the written instructions for the chart and you're stopping for the day. You can just place another You Are Here marker on this page and then you know that's where you left off. So you can use that on each page in addition to the highlighter. So that's just some of the really great features. In addition to that, there's a few other things you can do with the free version of the app. Up here, you'll notice we have a few little icons up here. This one here is for the box here that shows all our pages. So if we click that, it disappears. If we click it again, it comes back out. But if we click this one right next to it, you'll notice the arrows are at the bottom of the rectangle. If we click that, and then we have some project information pop up and it says, tap to add project notes. So you can add whatever you want for your project notes. So for example, I know that Beth's birthday is in November, so I might write, finish before November. So that way, I remember that I'm making this as a birthday gift for Beth, and I wanna have my shawl done for her, obviously, hopefully before her birthday. You also can add anything else you want here. If you wanted to maybe type in specific yarn information, what size needle you're using, this is where you can put in wherever, whatever kind of information you want. So we'll just bring our keyboard down. And now, let's look at the scribble function. So the scribble function is over here, and it just looks like a pencil or pen with a little scribble. And we'll click back to page two here. And so when you've clicked the Scribble button, a little bar pops up at the bottom, and you have all these different tools. You can make a little highlighter, you can make a pen. So let's do the highlighter first. So let's say you're reading along in your pattern, and it says, okay, work Chart C 16 times. And you're like, I really wanna remember that it's 16 times. And you could do this with your finger or a stylus. I just highlight 16 times there. Or maybe you know that you have a lot of extra yarn. So maybe you're gonna write, 18 times for my shawl. And so you can scribble on here, again, either with your finger or with a stylus. And that's really helpful to make notes along the way. Again, because before I started using this app, I really would use pencil and paper, and I would take notes right on my paper pattern. Well, this allows you to do the exact same thing, but on your device. Now that we've looked at the free version, let's take a look at some of the advanced features that come along with the paid version of the app. So the first thing we're gonna take a look at is the quick key. So we'll close our scribble here, and we're gonna open up that bottom menu. And right down here, you'll see literally a key icon. And that's your quick key. This is something that when you click over here, you'll always be able to see in your pattern. So for me, something that you might wanna always be able to pull up quickly to reference is the abbreviations. So let's take the page with the abbreviations on it and let's make that into a quick key. So I'm gonna click the key here, and then we're gonna long tap it. And now this page has become my quick key. And I can drag this up or down to make it whatever size I want. And then also, the quick key window itself, I can make it a little bit smaller if I just wanna be able just to really quick reference it, but I don't necessarily need to have it super big. I could just leave it like this. And then as I'm working along, I can be working along, and maybe I'm reading my instructions and I'm like, uh oh, I forgot what SSK means. Well, I just click here to bring up my quick key, and I can see right there, SSK. And it gives me the definition. So this is really great if you have pattern that has charts on a bunch of different pages, but it only shows you the chart legend or chart key one time. You can make a quick key that has the legend for your chart on it. So this is very versatile. Just really, you need to think about what things are you always having to flip your pages around in your knitting pattern as you're working. And that's something you might wanna actually turn into a quick key. So now that we've done that, let's take a look at setting up a chart. So now, let's go ahead and set up our chart. So to do that, we're gonna set up this Chart A that's on page three. So I'm gonna start by going to setup here at the top. We have knit, edit, and setup. So we're in setup. We're gonna hit the plus sign and hit Chart Piece. So there's a few different options here that you have. And we're working with the chart, so we're gonna click Chart and we're taking that chart from page three. So we're gonna go ahead and take that. So now what we need to do is crop our chart. And so you can pinch and zoom here, if you need to. And you're just trying to get your chart cropped as close to the lines as possible. There we go. And now, we're going to hit this magic wand, and there you go. So what it's done is it's created boxes where it thinks all of your chart boxes are. And so you do need to take a look at this, and this pops up a little reminder to review your results. But looking at this, I can see that it lined it up perfectly. Now, if it didn't, here where it says visible rows and number of stitches, I could change that number and adjust these a little bit, so that it would grab the entire chart. So now that it's done that, I can hit the Crop button, and here is my chart on page eight. And let's go ahead and change our page eight title to Chart A. And we'll save that. And there we go. And so, let's click back over to knit. And now here we have our chart. And what's really cool about this is now we have this smart marker or smart counter over here. And so as we tap it, look what's happening. It's automatically moving my highlighter up the row. Now what's even cooler is that you can get this to advance without even touching your device. So right here where there's a microphone, if we tap that, you have voice control. And I've just turned the voice control on, and it gives you your voice commands here. So we're gonna use one of these to have it keep advancing. So if I say, next. Next. Next. Now it's just advancing my line without me even having to touch my iPad. I don't have to put my knitting down to click my little counter and keep going. I can just say, next. Oh, I messed up. I need to do something else, back. Now it's gone back a row. So that's a really cool thing that you can use in order to keep track of your chart. It's just a really neat function of the knitCompanion app that you can just go ahead, make your chart exactly how you want it. You have your You Are Here marker. So when you're leaving off for the day, you can just put your little marker there and set it aside. And your chart is ready to go. Now that we've taken a look at the chart, let's look at some more features for this chart. And one thing is the magic markers. And the magic markers are really cool, because you can actually end up highlighting certain stitches, if you want, to keep track of what you're doing. So if you have a specialty stitch, maybe you have a cable, maybe you're working a color work chart. You can use the magic markers in order to sort of highlight certain stitches that you wanna use. So let's take a look at how to do that. So now we're ready to add our magic markers. So to do that, we're gonna go into Edit. And then we have these icons that pop up on the side, and we have this little magic wand here. And when we tap that, we have this pops up on the bottom, where we have a plus sign. Tap the plus to add a marker. So we're gonna tap that. And now we have a magic marker or a custom marker. So let's add the magic marker. So it says to tap on a stitch to select it. So let's say we have these SK2P stitches here, and there's not very many of them on this chart. So let's say we wanna remember those SK2P stitches. So I'm gonna click and it's gonna highlight that stitch. Here's the color it's making the stitch. We can tap on that, if we wanna change it to some other color, you can. And you can change the name of it. And we'll call that SK2P. And now, that is our stitch. The SK2P, we have it highlighted here. And now, we take a look here. You can set all these different things, if you only wanted to check the odd number of rows, the even number, whatever it is you, you can do. We're gonna do all here. So now once we've done that, we're gonna click the magic wand button. And look at that. It just highlighted all of the SK2P stitches on this chart. So it can be a really great way to give yourself a little reminder. And where this is really cool is if you have a color work chart that's in black and white, you can actually use these magic markers to turn it into a color work chart that's actually in color, which I think is really cool. And I think it can be really useful, even for things like lace, where sometimes, you're doing an unusual stitch or something like that. You can go ahead and just add a magic marker. So now that we've looked at charts, let's take a look at putting some pieces together, and I'm gonna show you how to put text pieces together. So for the text pieces, let's say I wanted to work from the written instructions for this chart. So I'm still just on page three here, but you could do this for any page of your pattern. And I'm gonna go ahead and click Setup again, and we'll scroll down. We'll hit this plus sign here, and now we're gonna add a text piece. And we're gonna do page three again, 'cause that's the chart we've just been working with. And again, we have the blue flashing arrow that's telling us that we need to crop. So I'm gonna start this one by just cropping half of these instructions, since I have two columns here. So we'll just start with the first half. And now that we've done that, maybe we'll change the name here to Chart A Written. And save. And we're gonna go ahead and crop. Now that we've added that first text piece, let's go ahead and add the rest of the instructions to this part. So we're gonna go ahead and hit this little square button down here to add another piece. We're gonna add another piece from page three, and once again, page three pops up. And now we're gonna crop it to bring down, bring it down to our other column of text. And there we go. And we go ahead and crop that. And we hit a line up here. And now look, we can bring our next column of text, and bring it right underneath. And that's all there is to that. We'll go ahead and click Save. And now look. I have all of that text that was in two columns. Now it's all in one column. So you can see, there's so many different ways to customize this particular app. And this is just the surface of it. There's so many different things you can do. You can take your time and move your parts around however you want to make your pattern truly work for you. And that's what's so great about knitCompanion, is that every designer sets their pattern up a little bit differently. And maybe you have a hard time following a pattern for whatever reason. There's complicated shaping in the sweater. There's a lot of charts you have to be doing at the same time. With the knitCompanion app, yes, it does take a little bit of time to set things up how you want at the beginning. But once you've done that, you have everything set up exactly how you want it, how it's gonna work for you and your brain. And you can just knit away, and not have to worry about anything else. So it's really great if you're somebody that enjoys tech, you love using tech in your knitting. I encourage you to try it. And even if you're not and you have an Apple device or an Android device, try the free version. Just play around even with those highlighter bars. There's these row counters down here that you can use to keep track of your rows. There's all different things you can do even with the free version of the app. But if you really, really wanna get technical and customize your pattern and pick apart the pieces and organize them in the way that works for you, then those advanced features that come along with the paid part of the app are really, really great. So I hope that you've enjoyed this look at the knitCompanion app, and I encourage you to give it a try.