Lace Knitting with Knit Companion

Hi, I'm Mary Beth Temple, and I'm here today on behalf of my friends at Knit Companion. Today I'm gonna talk to you about how you can use the Knit Companion app to enhance your lace knitting experience. Now I love to knit lace, but I find that I have to pay a whole lot of attention to it while I'm doing it or I'm not going to have a successful outcome. And I have always been one of those people that prints out the charts and gets the highlighter tape and the pencil and and scratches chicken scratch notes and all that kind of stuff, but now that I can use knit companion for my lace knitting, it doesn't matter that there's 3 lace charts in this scarf. I can use knit companion to help me know where I am in the pattern at any given moment, and it makes it more pleasurable to.

Because I'm not stressed out about am I on the right row? Is it 9 stitches here or is it 10 or is it 8? Knit Companion is gonna help me figure all that out. So this is the seraph scarf. I may have designed it myself and it will be available on Knit Companion, but right now what I wanna do is start a new project in knit Companion and the first thing we're gonna do is isolate our lace charts.

I've uploaded my PDF to Nick Companion. And the first thing I want to do is to isolate these charts, and I did say earlier that there are 3 different lace patterns in this scarf, but there are only 2 charts. There's chart 1 which has these 2 lace patterns at the bottom and chart 2, which has the more complicated lace pattern that I've used for the center of the scarf. So I'm gonna click set up and then I'm going to hit the plus sign over here on the right says chart piece that's the second thing down. I'm going to hit chart piece.

Now, it's going to ask me what page it has the chart that I want to work on. So I'm gonna work on the one on page 4 1st. And now I'm going to hit next. So you can see the arrow coming down on the top left. It's telling me to isolate all of the rows and stitches that are in the chart.

I'm gonna crop away all this extra white. So I'm gonna put my finger right here. And I'm going to make sure that all of the chart is included in the white area and not the highlighted area. It doesn't matter if it's exactly the same on all four sides. I just want to crop out as much of the extraneous material as I can, and I wanna make sure that I have all of my stitches.

In all of my rows, so now that my crop is where I want it, I can take my finger off and now we're gonna hit our magic wand which is right there and it says review results it says set the first row and count by check the grid matches the chart, adjust to find more or less lines if needed. So I'm looking here and I'm making sure that all of my stitches and rows are included in the chart, and they are. If you can see when I sort of expand it here, you can see there's nothing missing. It's telling me there are 48 visible rows and 29 stitches in the chart, and I know that to be correct. It's telling me the first row is row 1, which is great, and it's telling me to count rows by 1.

If I had a chart where only the right side rows were charted, I would ask it to count by 2, but since that's not the case, we're gonna leave that as count by 1 so we are all set with this chart if I go back to knit. It's all set up right here. The next thing I want to adjust is my row marker. That is the marker that goes from the bottom to the top and highlights one row at a time. The first thing I'm going to do is move it up a little higher on my iPad so I can see what I'm doing.

I have two options. I can tap this number. And you can see for each time that I tap it. The marker is going up a little higher. And I'm just doing this now so I can see where it is.

It's hard for me to see when it's at the very bottom of my iPad. The other thing I can do is use the microphone button and use the command next so I can change this to microphone. If I've never used the microphone before with the companion, my device is going to ask me for permissions. It's gonna ask me it's OK. It's going to tell me that it's gonna turn the mic on and now I can use voice commands.

So the command that I'm going to use today is to advance that marker right up and it is next. Every time I say that word. It's going to advance the row marker one row next. Next, Next, And if I have gone too far, I can use the word back. Back And it will respond to my voice that way I can keep my knitting in my hand and keep going with my knitting, especially in this uh center section that's a little complicated.

I don't have to put it down to touch my device to make the row marker move. Now right now the row marker is yellow, which is fine but I don't love it so I'm going to go to edit. And I am going to go to this little section right here. It looks like the outside of a frame, so I'm gonna touch there, and it's going to bring up my row marker at the bottom. So I can change the color.

And I want my odd row and my even row to be two different colors because that's gonna help me. Now in chart one, which is the one that we're working in, it's not such a huge deal because all of the work back rows are pearl but when we get to that second chart, particularly, there are decreases and increases in yarn overs happening on both right side rows and wrong side rows and so I want to know by glancing at my chart which I'm on whether I'm on a right side row or wrong side row so I'm going to make my odd rows. Let's make that a, uh, I'll use that little coral right there. That's gonna be my odd rose and I'm gonna make my even rose. Gray, I can use these controls down here to change the opacity.

Or the saturation, I can, I can get in there and finagle so I get the kind of gray that I would like. So that's OK with me. I'm gonna click knit. Gonna shirt tap my microphone. It's reminding me what the commands are.

And I'm going to say next. Next, Next, And you can see that my alternate rows are that sort of pinky coral color that I chose and gray. Now, if I'm looking at it in this kind of a setup. The row is highlighted with the color. But the method that I prefer, I want the row that I'm knitting to pop visually and I want the rest of the rows to sort of recede.

I still wanna see the rows that I've already worked because I like to compare the stitching that I'm doing with the stitching that I've already completed, but I'm going to go back into edit. I'm going to hit that little crossbar again. And I'm looking at my colors down here and I'm going to hit invert. Now When I'm on an odd numbered row, that coral color is highlighting all the other rows. I can still see what's going on here.

But I'm focused on the knitting. I'm focused on the row that I'm going to knit, not the rows that I have already completed or the rows I have yet to do so I can still see what I'm doing in relationship to the rest of the work, which I appreciate as a lace knitter, but my eye is gonna go right there to the row that I'm actually working on so I'm going to leave it just like that. I'm going to leave it inverted. Now, I find personally, I don't use the stitch slider a whole lot. The stitch slider is here.

You can see this blue line going back and forth. It will show you exactly where you are in the repeat. I find I don't use it a lot because most of the charts that I work from are relatively narrow, so I don't tend to get too lost so I'm gonna go ahead and turn my stitch slider off and I'm gonna do it right here where it says show when I switched it off, it went away. If I wanted to use it, I could do a couple of things I could change the color. Using the color wheel like we did before.

And I can change the width. If I really want to use that stitch slider and I want it to be a little more obvious, I can go ahead and thicken that line or I could make it very, very thin if I wanted to. But for me, I don't like to use it, so I'm gonna go ahead and turn it right off. Here's my chart and I'm all ready to knit chart one. So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to set up chart two the same way that we just set up chart one.

Now that I have both of my charts uploaded, the one we did together and the one that I did myself, the next thing I want to show you is how to add a key, and I use it for lace knitting because sometimes you're going ahead and you're knitting along and you can't remember what that symbol means. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into setup. I'm going to hit that plus sign again. And here's where we added the chart piece. We're gonna go ahead and add a key.

So I'm going to add the key. Now, I know that my key is at the bottom of page 3, so I'm going to select page 3. And then I'm gonna have that same little opportunity that I had with the chart. I'm gonna go ahead and make sure that everything that I want in the key is happening inside the white box. And then I'm going to go to knit.

When I'm knitting right along and I need a little refresher on what each individual symbol means I can go ahead and press on that key button and it pops up right there. There's my legend. And there are all of the symbols that I'm using in my individual charts, so it's right there at the bottom of the knit screen. So when I'm knitting right along if I need a refresher, I can click right there. I don't have to go scrolling through all the pages of the PDF.

While I'm working on my second chart here, I noticed that there was one step I eliminated when I was talking earlier about the colors. When I go into my color, I'm in the edit function. I'm working on coloring my chart, and if I want to change the uh saturation or the brightness, if you don't hit select, it won't save. So once you have the color now if you look at this little circle right here, that's the color we started with this one on the right. Right hand side is telling me that's the color I'm going to get having uh manipulated these sliders a little bit and I like a lighter color.

I want a lot of contrast. I want a pink and a blue and a green and a coral and a gray, but I want a light iteration of it. I don't want like an in your face bright color now you could be different. You might want, you might want it to be. You know, screaming violet and that's OK too, but I did wanna mention that when you use the sliders and you're happy with that hit select.

I'm gonna do it to the gray also because I messed with it before but I forgot to hit select so it didn't go through so I'm gonna bring the opacity down because I want it to be a little lighter. I'm gonna go ahead and hit select and there it is now I have my lighter color so once again remember I have this on inversion so that the row that I want to knit is highlighted and then I'm gonna go back to knit and there is that particular chart. While we're talking about the lace charts, I want to use the magic marker function to isolate the different symbols in this pattern we have an SK2P. We have a yarn over, we have an SSK and a K2 tag. So I'm gonna use the magic marker function and I'm going to give each one of those symbols a different color.

That's going to give me a visual clue in addition to the symbol of what stitch I'm going to do, where and the reason that is helpful is even if you're going row by row in your chart if it's all one color and all the symbols sort of look the same, it can blur together and. Brain after a while, so having a color cue to let you know, oh if it's pink, it must be an SSK that's gonna help you have a more pleasurable knitting experience. So let's take a look at how to use magic markers to isolate lace symbols. The first thing I'm going to do is hit edit. Then on the right hand side, I'm going to hit my magic wand.

And then I'm going to hit the plus in the lower left hand corner to add a marker. Right here it offers me the choice of magic marker or custom marker. I'm using magic marker. And the instructions are right here. It says, Please tap on a stitch to select it.

This is the stitch that you want to match. If the stitch is wide, for example, a cable, drag the left and right edge until the entire stitch is selected. Now, I just want to highlight the individual stitches. So let's select the yarn over. So I'm gonna go here.

And click on a yarn over. And I've already done the other chart and I want the colors to be consistent between the two charts again to sort of help my brain remember what's going on and in the other chart I made the yarn over a lavender so I'm gonna go to the lavender right here and I'm going to check and make sure that it's nice and light, which is what I wanted. Let's take it down a little bit. And I'm going to name that stitch. I'm gonna name it yarn over, yarn over.

I'm gonna type that right in there. So now it's named, it's colored. I'm gonna click on show all. And now I'm going to hit the magic wand. One of the things that I found tricky when I was learning this was earlier the magic wand was up on the right hand side and now it's down here underneath the color box.

So I'm gonna hit the magic wand. And boom, all of my yarn overs are highlighted and they're highlighted in purple. I can go to knit. And if I want to expand that I can, but that's letting me know that all of that has happened now I said to you that I did chart one earlier and then I did chart two. Just because you have color coded one chart doesn't mean the color codes are gonna track over to the other charts.

So every chart that you have that is a lace chart, you need to go in and color and rename individually, but this way you can use the magic marker to highlight stitches. Now one of the interesting things that happens on chart two in this lace pattern is that a specific symbol can mean two different things depending on whether it's on a right side row or a wrong side row. So to help us figure that out while we're navigating our chart, we're going to use a function called named colors. I'm going to name a specific color. And I'm going to put the description right underneath there and then if I need a little help figuring out what's going on then that information will be there for me.

So once again we're looking at chart 2 because that is the chart where this kind of thing happens on chart one, all those wrong side rows are pearl rows as you watch me work on the named color function, it's possible to add that symbol one time with two different descriptions to say on the right side row do this. On the wrong side row to do that, but I can also make two different colors assign one to the right side row and assign the other color to the wrong side row that's going to give me more information while I'm knitting so that's the version I'm going to do right now. I'm going to go to edit. And I'm going over here to the right hand bar and I'm going to look for the symbol that looks like an artist palette. Then I'm going to click on the three dots on the top right, and I'm going to say make new color.

So I'm going to call this. SSK for slip slip knit. On right side. So for the description, I'm going to write slip each. Of next to stitches knit wise.

Replace on left hand needle. Knit two together through back loop. Because that is an SSK. I'm gonna go up and add a space here because I cannot type and talk at the same time. And I'm going to pick a color.

Let's pick a blue. Which is sort of like the SS case that I had on the other chart. I'm going to bring the saturation down. Because I like a light color, the opacity is good, the brightness is good. I'm going to click save.

Now I'm going to add another named color. That is similar And we're gonna call that. That's Pearl two together through back loop. And we're going to put for the description pearl 2 stitches. Together through the Back loop.

And I also wanna make that I wanna make it similar to the SSK on the right side. I want them to look like they're friends, so I'm gonna do this kind of lavender color right here again. I'm gonna bring the opacity down. I want it to be pretty light. Let's see if we can make that a little bluer to match its friends.

No, it's too purple. You can sit and play with this all day, and now I'm gonna hit save. Now, the other place that this happens is with the knit two together. So I'm gonna make a color that is. Knit 2 together On right side.

And the description knit to let's use the number. Together On right side. I'm gonna make this one green because we used green for the knit two together on the other chart, so I'm just gonna pick a green color once again bringing that saturation down because I don't like it to be super dark and I can see what effect the sliders are having on the color by looking at the middle there and I'm gonna hit save. Now, I did just notice on this Pearl 2 together that I forgot to write on the wrong side. If you want to edit a named color that you already have, you click this button right here, which is the edit.

And I'm going to add on wrong side, and down here, I'm gonna add on wrong side. And save So now I'm gonna make one more. It's slip one. Knit two together, pass slipped stitch over and that is on the wrong side and I'm gonna go down here it is slip 1 stitch pearl wise. Knit 2 together.

Pass Slipped Stitch over knit stitch. And allow it to drop off and I want that to be a green color too because I want it to be similar to its friend, the knit two together on the right side. So it I don't need it to be exactly the same. I want it to be a little bit different but not a lot different. I'm just gonna have it be friends and I'm gonna hit save.

Now, I've noticed it does not like commas, so I'm gonna go ahead and take those out. So now we're gonna save. So here are my four named colors, and remember, if I have to edit, I'll go back over here and hit one of these blue buttons in the blue column. So I'm gonna hit the back. OK, let's make a named color that SSK on the right side.

We already selected a color for it. Let's set it up here on this chart. So we're gonna hit our wand. We're we're in the edit screen we're gonna hit the plus. We're gonna hit magic marker.

This is all stuff that we've done before and we're gonna look for that SSK. Now I'm going to rename it. SSK on. Right side. I'm gonna click my color box.

And I'm going to click on named color, and there is my SSK on right side right there. I'm going to pick it. Now earlier we did show all on all rows, but I only wanna show this particular one on the right side and I know for this pattern that the right side rows are the odd numbered rows so I'm gonna go here to the odd numbered rows so I have it named I have it not colored. I'm going to hit my magic wand one more time, and there they are. Now, to do the same symbol on the other rows, we're gonna have to add another marker.

So I'm going to add a marker. I'm gonna use that same symbol. Let's find our color in named color. Pearl two together through the back loop on the wrong side. Here we go.

I'm gonna rename it pearl two together on wrong side show all rows but only show the even rows because the even rows are where this iteration occurs we're going to make sure we have this all together and hit the magic wand one more time, and there it is. So we have a color that's slightly different from the right side I think looking at this now I think what I might do is put a little bit more contrast between the colors but if I go to the knit screen I can see that when I hit this symbol it's going to tell me SSK on the right side and it's gonna tell me what those instructions are if I hit that same symbol on a wrong side row. Say I go up here and I hit that same symbol, it's telling me pearl two together on the wrong side through the back loop with those instructions, so Nick companion can differentiate the same symbol between the right side rows and the wrong side rows so. So again this is a new function. I'm kind of learning it myself I think I might have picked colors with a little more contrast, but I would like them to be in the same family you might want them to be completely different.

It all depends on the knitting experience that you want to develop. So the next thing I will do, and I will do it off camera so you don't have to watch me again, but I'm gonna go ahead and use that right leaning decrease. I'm going to mark it as a K2 tag on the right side and I'm going to mark it as. Slip one pearl one PSSO pass slip stitch over on the wrong side and I'm gonna key those colors in but using the named color enables you to write in a description so not only am I getting the symbol. To remind me what I'm doing, especially on a more complicated lace pattern, if I'm concerned that I don't remember how to do that stitch, maybe it's a noop maybe it's a bobble, maybe it's some long insane complicated thing that you have to do the instructions are right there and what that does is that keeps me from having to go down to the legend and scroll and figure out what the instructions are.

Having it as a named color gives me all the information I need at the tap of a button. Another thing that we can do while we're in this edit section is use this page, this magic marker page to count stitches in a row, consecutive stitches, be they knit stitches or pearl stitches. So what I did is using the same idea that we just used when I was putting. In my yarn overs and my knit two togethers and my SSKs I went in and I put a very, very light color on the knit stitch. Now an empty box in this pattern and the other chart as well is knit on the right side, pearl on the wrong side, but I have to give it a name.

Before Nick companion can count the stitches, now Nick companion will only count places where there are 3 or more stitches in a row. That's the minimum. But if you're doing some kind of different pattern and you only want it to count other iterations, if you only want to point out where there's more than 5 stitches in the row or 6 stitches in the row, you can change that count here, but 3 is the minimum. 3 is the smallest number of stitches in a row that knit companion will throw a number up for you so you don't have to count blocks. So to do that I created a color that you can just barely see.

I used that blank blocks. I called it knit on right side pearl on wrong side. We have show all like we did before, so it's hard for you to see because I didn't want a lot of color in here. It's just barely colored, but now I'm going down here to where it says show count. And I have two options now and they both have their uses.

One is all rows. So if I hit all rows, you can see that the number pops up on every single row where there are empty boxes, which is net on the right side, pearl on the wrong side. Every place where there are 3 or more in a row I'm getting a little pale pink oval and the pale pink goes with the color that I chose for that block that tells me there's 3 in a row or 10 in a row or 7 in a row and 5 in a row. Now I don't necessarily need all of that information when I'm knitting one row at a time so the setting that I prefer to use is the current row setting. So if I go to current row.

Then when I go to knit. It will only show me. The numbers on the road that I'm working on and as I advance. It will tell me where those stitches are, how many I need to have. I like this function.

I don't find it super important for a pattern like this where there are very few iterations in which I have more than 5 or 6, but if you're doing a lace pattern that has a long amount, a long string of knits or pearls, having this function is wonderful. It's a great big help. Now that we have the chart set up to our liking, I'm going to add row reminders and when I do that, the written text of the pattern will show up connected to each row of the chart. So to do this, I want to go from the net screen to the setup screen, and I want to make sure that I am highlighting the page of the chart I want to work on. So right now we're gonna work on chart 2.

So I'm going to go to set up and I'm going to look for the symbol that has the paper clip on it. The paper clip is that's where the row reminder is going to be. I'm going to leave myself a note. So I'm gonna hit that paper clip. And it says tap the plus to add a row reminder, so that's what I'm going to do.

You must start with row one. It doesn't matter if you don't want to put row reminders on every single row for whatever reason, but you must start with row one so that it all functions appropriately, so I'm gonna hit row one. Now, I want to have my text, so I have to add a piece. Now, I'm gonna use this plus sign down at the bottom and it says piece right there. And how I remember it is I have to add a piece of text.

So I'm gonna hit plus. I'm going to select the page that has the text that I want and hit next. Now I'm working on chart two, which starts way down here, and that arrow is the same arrow that we used when we used our magic markers to color the chart so I'm gonna go here and highlight the row. Once I've done that I can finesse it a little bit. It's going to enlarge.

I wanna take as much white space away as I can. I, I want the text to sort of fill the box so this looks good to me and now I'm happy it says row 1 here. It says row 1 here. I'm all set. Let's do it again.

We're gonna do row 2 now, so I'm gonna hit the plus side on this side. I'm going to tell it I want to work on row 2. And I'm going to add a piece of text, so I have to hit the plus sign next to where it says peace. Uh, it's on page 2. I do know that.

I have to make sure I'm coming down to chart 2. I'm gonna highlight that second row. Adjust it a little bit. And now I'm all set. When I am knitting away and I am on row 2 of my chart, the row 2 text will appear on the same screen.

Now what if you have a repeat? What if you have a row that repeats a bunch of different times? I'm going to scroll down to rows 10 because I know that rows 1012, and 14 are all the same row because I see that repeat in the text pattern and also in the chart. So I'm going to hit my plus sign on the right and I'm going to go down to row 10. Now I'm gonna add a piece of text, so I'm going to add piece and now I know because I checked ahead of time that the text I'm looking for is not on page 2, it's on page 3, but I can select it right here.

Now I'm gonna go to next and I'm looking here where it says rows 1012, and 14. That is the row that I want to highlight. And crop it a little bit. Now because I want it on row 10 where it's already existing, but I also want it on 12 and 14 instead of having to go on row 12 and go on row 14 and copy it over again, I'm gonna hit this little button right here that has the two pages and I'm going to copy. And now it's giving me a choice of rows.

I'm going to copy it to row 12 and to row 14, and then to save it here, I'm gonna hit that copy button. So now I look over here on the left-hand side, I see rows 1012, and 14 all exist because I copied that text. Let's take a look. Here's 10. 12 14, they're all the same.

This happens again on rows 9, 11, and 13, so I'm gonna show you one more time just to uh help it stick. I'm gonna hit the plus button on the side and I'm gonna go to row 9 because that's where I'm adding my text. Remember I hit the plus again by the piece word the piece text because I'm adding a piece of text. I know it's on page 3. I'm gonna hit next and now I'm going to look here it is, rows 9, 11, and 13.

Going to highlight the text. There it is. I can adjust it a little. I don't need quite this much white space. There it is, very readable so it's showing up on row 9.

You can see that right down here, but I also want to see it on rows 11 and 13, so I'm gonna hit copy, which is where the two pages are. You're making copies. You need more than one page. I'm gonna hit that copy button. I'm gonna scroll down.

I'm gonna hit row 11 and row 13. And then this time I have to hit that copy button to make sure that it saves to the additional rows. Copy. And now here we are. If we look at the lower left-hand side, we have row 9, row 11, and row 13 are all the way in there.

Once you have the row reminders set up where you would like them to be, now, I think it's finally time to knit. So let's go back to our knit screen. I'm gonna go back out of row reminders and go to the knit screen and let's go ahead and knit a row. So I have my highlighted row of the chart in case I want to look at the chart, but also because of the clever use of row reminders, I have my knit text right below. Now that highlight's not gonna show up on your copy.

This is a draft pattern that I'm working for, and I left myself a little note, um, but the lime green was for me, not for you, so that's not gonna show up on your finished pattern. So whether I'm looking at the chart or I'm looking at the text, I have the exact same thing happening. I'm going to slip one. Knit too One 2 Knit 2 1 2 yarn over. Slip, slip, knit slip 1, slip 2.

Put them back on the left hand needle and knit 2 together through the back loop. Knit one Pearl one Knit one Knit 2 together Yarn over Knit 2 3. And we're only seeing the full repeat in the pattern so that first, that slip one knit 2, that's before the asterisk that's happening over here when we get to the asterisk here is our repeat and it is outlined in the red so I'm back to the beginning of the stitch repeat knit 2. But it's here where the asterisk is where if you're looking at the chart, it's where the red line is. You are over.

SSK slip slip. Knit 2 together through the back loop. one Pearl one Knit one Knit 2 together Yarn over knit 2 3 So I'll knit that repeat as many times as I need to, and if I'm following along with the chart, I see that when that last repeat is finished, I have a knit to at the end or if I'm reading along with the text pattern, I see that that asterisk when it's over, when that repeat is over, I also have knit 2 at the end so the text and the chart match. When I've completed this row and I'm ready to move on to the next one, I'm either going to use my voice control, my microphone right here, I'm gonna go ahead and and advance the chart to the next row. The gray is telling me it's a wrong side row.

I have everything all written out right here and here is my text right down here that tells me all of the written instructions for the wrong side row. So as I advanced through the pattern. The chart will advance and also the text will advance, so that's how the row reminders work with the chart. There's so many things that you can do with the knit Companion app, and I hope that focusing on the ones that are super relevant to lace knitting today will help you figure out the tips and tricks that you would like to use in your lace knitting. I'm Mary Beth Temple here on behalf of my friends at Knit Companion.

Thank you so much for joining me.