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KnitWiki - May's featured articlePosted by on Thursday 1 May, 2008 09:38 AM The featured article for May has been added to the KnitWiki. I'm going to make you go there to find out what it is :) The All-Knitting Post!Posted by on Wednesday 10 October, 2007 12:29 PM Come on, seriously, you knew there'd be a great big all knit-related post on here if you waited long enough, didn't you? And not only do I have one cool knitting thing to tell you about, I have three! Possibly four... 1: Hats! There's a new baby in our extended family (ie: not actually blood related to but still family nonetheless type family) and of course this means there's been a bunch of baby knitting going on. And of course, this being my blog, the knitting is hats for next Winter (and a bunny rabbit but I haven't started that yet). First was a zigzag jester hat in dk weight wool on 4mm needles. The caramel yarn is Cleckheaton Country 8 ply and the pink is Paton's Fireside. I just remembered that I have a little yarn flower to sew on that one, almost forgot! I'll have to post another pic later today after I've sewn it on... (darn)
That was so much fun to knit that I immediately started a little beanie with the leftover caramel and some Jo Sharp Dk wool in Amethyst.
and finally, because I love this yarn sooooo much, I made another little jester hat with a scrap of Scheepjes "Flame Colori" (at least I think that's what it's called).
This particular yarn (although not this colour) has great sentimental meaning to me. When I was young I went with my Mum to the yarn shop and she totally fell in love with a cardigan made from it in a blue/green/pink colourway. She decided immediately that it wasn't made well enough so she bought extra yarn and the pattern booklet and reknit the button band to her liking (she was a flawless button band knitter) and more yarn to make a matching pullover. That was the day that I learnt that knitting isn't precious and if it isn't right, rip it out and fix it! The yarn is also from an era when yarn companies knew how to make a good quality novelty yarn (the 1980's). Unlike the thick and thin yarns that you get these days, that pill and fall apart in two minutes, this stuff will take quite a bit of wear and tear because the manufacturer made a good choice of breed and characteristics. Too bad the lot that just sold on ebay was too expensive to post or I would have replaced my rapidly dwindling collection of this particular yarn (that I scored at the op shop for $5!) All of these patterns come from my "Any Yarn, Any Size Knit Hat Book", including the colour charts for knitting the cats and zigzags. Speaking of which... 2: I'm on the Sticks & String podcast! Twice even :) Well, the book is anyway. Check out episode 38 for a review of The Any Yarn, Any Size Knit Hat Book, in which David Reidy very kindly compares it to Elizabeth Ziimmermann's style of patterns and episode 39 for an interview with me. I haven't listened to it yet. Hopefully I don't sound like I'm three years old (I have had telemarketers ask me if my Mummy or Daddy were home in the past and I sternly refuse to phone up to place takeaway orders). Or an idiot. That would also be bad :P I have absolutely no way to cleverly segue to the next thing I have to say, so: 3: LibriVox knitters rock! A group of knitters at LibriVox are working on updating and recording a public domain book called "Exercises in Knitting" by Cornelia Mee, originally published in 1846 and are very graciously putting the text versions of the patterns in the knitwiki under a public domain license. There are still some patterns needing knitters and readers so check it out and lend a hand if you can. Ms Mee was an excellent pattern writer for the time period and the couple of patterns that I have knit have been quite easy to follow. Finally, number 4: I'm selling off a large amount of laceweight merino (2/22, 500gm cones) on behalf of someone else. If you have a ravelry account you can see it in my stash for trade or sale area. If not, email me and I'll send you the list of what's left. I'm asking AUD$15.50 plus postage for 500gm for colours and $13.50 plus postage for white. Cone sizes vary slightly and are priced accordingly. If you're not on ravelry, drop me a note via my contact page if you're interested. Ooh, there's a number 5. I'm now listed on librarything as an author! I'll have to get a paid account before I can list the rest of my books, but I've added most of my knitting books already. I do have to correct some of the editions but it's very handy to be able to put all my books in there and then import them into ravelry once a fortnight to see if any of the new books come up. This, That and the Other ThingPosted by on Wednesday 20 June, 2007 10:17 AM Techy Website Stuff The move to the new server is going well, despite my broadband being speed limited at the moment because we used up our monthly bandwidth limit 2 weeks ago. Good news is that it should reset and speed up tomorrow. I do have to install image magick and netpbm myself using shell access. I've never done this sort of thing before but (fingers crossed) I can get it up and going. At the moment I'm uploading the website files to the new server. It takes a while to upload a gig on a speed limited connection (a couple of days). Suffolk Puffing 1,404 suffolk puff yo-yos made. 196 puffs and a whole lot of sewing together to go (by August 19th). I'm cautiously confident about getting it finished in time. I'm also saving some fabric to make myself a couple of cushion covers, although I won't be using them until we buy our own house. KnitWiki The spam protection methods I installed seem to be working well. We haven't had any spam users sign up since I installed recaptcha. Once the server move is finished I'm going to install it in my blog as well so that commenters won't have to wait for me to approve comments. Hopefully this will encourage readers to have some sort of discussion in the comments. Bink's Skully Jumper Haven't gotten any further since the last post because suffolk puffs and website moves are taking up all my time. Must work on it some more so she can wear it before Spring :-P Hat Book Rewrite The rewrite of my hat book remains unfinished due to many reasons. As soon as the website and the yo-yo quilt are done I'm going to work on nothing else until it's finished and sent to the illustrator that I have in mind so they can see if they want to work on it. I do apologise to everyone who's been emailing me after a copy. After deciding to rewrite the book we have had a death in the family, sold our home, moved 900km, been homeless for 8 months (our family of three lived in a single room at my Dad's house and were really grateful to have somewhere to stay at all), had our possessions in storage for about a year, lost two dear pets to cancer and are only just getting sorted out and back on track. I am terrible at multi-tasking so I have to make it the next priority. If I don't have it released in time for Christmas you all have permission to send me hate mail. Actually, I'm going to go and work on it now while my ftp program uploads files. Panic Stations - A Small Vent and Game Plan (Sort of)Posted by on Friday 15 June, 2007 09:34 AM I received notification this morning that the new virtual private server has been set up. That's the good news. (At the time of writing this the site is still running off the shared server). Bad news is that even though I was assured I can run this website on the new server with only the skills I told them I had (some HTML and the ability to reinstall my databses using PHPadmin), I can't even figure out how to log in to the damn thing to even start setting stuff up. And the cost is blowing out much higher than I had anticipated and just gets more expensive by the second. I'm beginning to panic. I expected $40 US per month, which has already gone up to $50 per month because I need them to install cpanel because I don't know how to run a website using anything else. Luckily the extra $10 also includes upgrades to php and other things I don't know how to run. However it doesn't include the licenses to use these other products and I'm in a panic that it's going to blowout the cost to over double that. Is the knitting wiki worth the extra cost of $500 to $1200 per year? I have no idea. If it gets too popular then I'll have to upgrade to a dedicated server and that starts at $100 per month before any addons. And the wiki has only been online for 3 and a half months. Without any ongoing sponsorship or people making regular monthly donations I'm afraid the cost is going to get totally out of control, let alone the technical aspects of running my own server. What do I need to get this under control? I need: *Someone I can trust that has the skills needed to run a virtual private server or dedicated server (if we need to upgrade again) *Someone with PHP and CSS skills - the wiki needs a new skin to make it look more professional *Short term lend of the skills of a graphic designer. We need a decent logo and someone to work with the php and css person to design the layout of the wiki skin *Regular monthly donations. I'm going to see if I can set up buttons in the donations section so people can sign up to make a regular monthly donation of 5 or 10 dollars as well as single one-off donations if they choose. Recent donations covered the cost of paying for one year (at $50 per month, not the anticipated $40) and emergency purchase of a new modem when mine fried itself a few weeks ago but it's all gone already. Believe it or not, a regular $5 donation makes a huge difference. If 25 people signed up to make a monthly $5 donation that would cover the basic cost of a dedicated server. On a more content related basis we need: *People to add photos to the pages on http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Pages_Requiring_Photographs *People willing to add their favourite public domain knitting patterns. These can be scanned images from the original vintage books or typed. You'll find copyright info at *People to add their favourite (free and purchasable) patterns and pattern tips to the favourite patterns category at: Got a favourite knitting podcast? Tell us all about it and where to find them by adding an article to the podcast category: If it's about anything to do with knitting please feel free to add it! Even if you just paste in plain text another user can always some along and add the appropriate category, links etc. I guess I should post some of this to the wiki too. Suffolk Puff Yo-Yos, Miss Binky's Jumper and the KnitWikiPosted by on Monday 11 June, 2007 12:06 PM Just a quick update on a few things: Suffolk puff/yo-yo count to date: 1,155 I'm getting a bit behind so I'll be madly sewing little circles tonight to try and make it up to at least 1,200 Miss Binky's Jumper: I've knit the front with the big skull on it up to the armholes but minus the ribbing. I started above the ribbing with a provisional cast on and used DomiKNITrix's fabulous large skull chart, which fit nicely with an inch or so plain black below and above the motif. Next I'm going to knit the back the same way (but without the skull) and sew the side seams. Then I'll knit the ribbing in the round down from the provisional cast on (so I can lengthen it easily if she grows suddenly) and finish the rest as a basic raglan jumper, knit in the round. With a v-neck. I did finally tame my gauge with that damn yarn. I ended up ripping it out **again** and starting a third time with 3.75mm needles and 8 fewer stitches to make it the right size. That's when I realised how thick-and-thin the yarn is. In spots it ranges from 10 ply to 6 ply thickness (that's aran to sportweight for the non-Aussies), and the only way I could figure out a consistent gauge was to just knit a huge chunk of the front of the jumper and keep restarting until I got it right. But now it's right. So yay. I loved knitting DomiKNITrix's large skull chart so much that I'm going to add it to the KnitWiki as a favourite pattern once I've finished Bink's jumper for the sample photo. If you're not familiar with it, the favourite patterns category has notes, tips and sources for popular knitting patterns. Speaking of the KnitWiki, I've been slowly moving the patterns from the homework section of knitting-and.com over to the wiki, and have been updating the charts as I go. I've done a big chunk, which you'll find here, but there's still a lot more to go. The whole website will also be moving over to a virtual private server soon, so watch out for updates regarding that. If I break anything during the move I apologise in advance! Hmmm, I guess that wasn't such a quick update after all... Wiki Stuff UpsPosted by on Tuesday 22 May, 2007 12:34 PM My apologies for the recent stuff-up with the wiki URLs not working properly over the last day or two. It's fixed now, so all offsite links to the wiki will now work properly. I apologise for the inconvenience but I hadn't realised my previous fix was redirecting everyone who followed a link to the home page without the index.html at the end of the URL to the wiki, instead of where it was supposed to go. Whoa!Posted by on Thursday 29 March, 2007 03:23 PM I stopped looking at the wiki for a couple of hours and 30 new articles appeared! Good work everyone! :-) What's A Wiki Worth?Posted by on Monday 12 March, 2007 02:02 PM Marilyn's blog post today has brought up some interesting questions on the worth of a knitting wiki, and I felt a need to write a reply. Actually, it's not a response exactly, but my views on the subject as well as explaining the way I see my particular knitting wiki as working. Mar, I'm going to quote you throughout. Readers, if I have shortened a quotation please see the original post for what I have removed. Please note that Marilyn was talking about knitting wikis and wikis in general, although I can only reply as the owner of one particular knitting wiki. I think this is an interesting discussion and invite other knitting wiki owners to leave a comment (and anyone else who wants to, of course). Marilyn writes: I have to agree with Marilyn's opinion that, since anyone can add to a wiki they are open to a great deal of misinformation. Huge wikis like wikipedia are particularly prone to this problem. I feel that the same is true of any website though. Anyone can set up a website these days for free, or add their opinion to an email list discussion. Even books on the same subject can have totally different ways of achieving the same outcome. No matter what your source of information is, critical analysis is an important part of any research. The thing I really like about wikis is that if, for example, someone disagreed with my way of working a yarn over, they can put their additional info, or different opinion right there on the page (or on the talk page) so that everyone can immediately see both points of view. Are the new articles in my wiki checked for accuracy? You betcha. I work on all of the knitting-and.com website on a full time basis, 8 - 15 hours a day. However, I'm not going to change someone else's information in the wiki just because they do things differently to me. There wouldn't be any point in running a wiki if I did. I may not like working SSK, but I'm not going to go through people's patterns and change them all to Slip 1, k1, psso just because I prefer to knit a left slanting decrease (when worked on a right side row) that way. What are my credentials as a knitting wiki owner? Well, I've been running knitting-and.com for 11 years now & the 6,000 to 11,000 individuals that visit every day seem to like what I have to say. I've been a knitter for 32 of my (almost) 37 years and investigating the mathematics and techniques that make knitting work is the reason I like it so much. To quote some more of what Marilyn says: I don't know what other knitting wiki owners think, but that definitely isn't my intention in starting a knitting wiki. As Marylin says, I don't even think it's possible. So what was my intention in starting the wiki? I think of it more in terms of a community blog or a knitting guild. Wiki visitors are a bunch of people brought together by a common interest. They might want to share what they know about knitting. They might want to find out more about knitting. They might want to share stories about what knitting means to them. In the case of a wiki, they may only be interested in correcting other people's grammar! It's all good. Whether someone visits the wiki to find information, write a 20,000 word essay on the techniques of Scandinavian knitting, correct someone's spelling or add a single photograph to an article there is value in that. Sure some of that can be done by having your own website, writing a book or adding to a conversation in an email list. A wiki is just one more way of sharing information. When it comes right down to it, a wiki is just a piece of software for formatting a website, with the option of letting other people add stuff too. Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth. What do you think? Stuff What I Have Been DoingPosted by on Sunday 11 March, 2007 03:53 PM I've been working on a lot of projects this week and, as usual, not finishing any of them. I think I need to have a couple of months finishing my WIPs. Most of them knitting related, although little of it actual knitting. I've added quite a few "how-to" articles and three vintage patterns to the knitting wiki (and I'm not the only one!). I'm going to link to everything in the wiki from the main section of knitting-and.com as well so more people will find out about the knitting wiki project if they are taken there from a section of the web site they already know about. That's one of the things I didn't get finished this week :-P Most of the articles I added are here: http://www.knitting-and.com/wiki/Category:Techniques I also didn't quite finish typing up the manuscript for my book. I've finished writing it, however I write all my books long hand in note books and I need to type up the last couple of changes. I must get that finished. Yep. I think it's definitely time for some FO-ing around here! No, not that "FO"! I mean finishing stuff!!! PS: The "needlecrafts from stash" thing is going well. I've only purchased 4 little cards of embroidery silk and they don't count because they were for a class. Plus a friend gave me some fibre to spin that she dyed but I'll tell you all about that during the week!!! On TrackPosted by on Friday 2 March, 2007 08:01 AM It's my goal to have 40 articles in the wiki by tonight so that I can spend the weekend helping other editors in case they have any problems. Today I shall tackle "yarn over" and "how to knit a picot edge". The yarn over article will be quite long because there are a lot of photos, plus a fair bit of extra info when it comes to antique and vintage patterns. With Jamie's help I also hope to make videos for the yarn over article and also the one I edited a few days ago on how to join your stitches for knitting in the round. If I get those two new articles finished this morning I will have reached my goal and I'll spend time making a couple of changes to the manuscript of my hat book so that I can give it to the editor to check while I take the rest of the photos. I'm a bit stressed about whether I should reknit one of the sample hats. I won't be sure if it's too long until I get hold of my man-sized glass head which I think is still at my Dad's house, over an hour's drive away. I should just get Jamie to try it on but he fights back ;-) I'm hoping that many of the new people who subscribed to be editors for the wiki will have a go this weekend, even if they just try out the wiki code by making their user pages. I am a bit concerned that people are scared of using the wiki code and I might need to find a way to convince them that it really is quite simple. (It is!). Perhaps it's time to find out how the photoshop guys do their video tutorials and do something in the same vein. It's really important to me that the wiki takes off. Not just because it took me two months to set up and cost me $250 in server changes (not to mention Ipowerweb refusing to refund the remaining 5 months of hosting I had paid for "because it wasn't 6 months"), but because Brenda had a brilliant idea and if I can't make such a brilliant idea work because people are scared of the technology that means that I'm not doing my job right. I think additional video tutorials of how to do stuff might be the way to go. Now I just need to figure out how to do that... Transdimensional Rational Discrepencies. Or Something...Posted by on Thursday 1 March, 2007 02:28 PM I have discovered something very frustrating about writing wiki articles. I thought I'd spend a few days seeing if I could write some of the articles from the wanted pages list, because when it comes to my websites I'm a bit of a neat freak... But! No matter how many articles I write, the wanted pages list just stays the same size. In fact, it now contains 24 articles and when I started it had 23. I try and be good and only link to articles that are really important, but it seems that for every article I write, I'm linking to at least one new article that hasn't been written yet. I'm sure there's a scientific name for this phenomenon. Hmmmmm... I think I'll go and write an article on yarn overs. And I'll try not to link to anything unless I really really need to! Wow!Posted by on Saturday 24 February, 2007 06:01 PM I went to add an article to the knitting wiki today and found that the number of articles had doubled overnight. How cool is that? :-) A big thank you to everyone who has embraced the project! It's very heartwarming to see that we have had 12 people sign up already (other than myself and Mr Knittingand), and the wiki has only been open for a couple of days. I was especially happy to receive several emails from people who said they knew nothing about editing wiki pages but they had a go and asked me to check if they'd done it right. They'd both done a brilliant job & I really appreciate their have-a-go attitude to the project. I've started a knitwiki yahoo group for anyone who wants to add new articles. That way we'll have a very public chat community to help each other. Not only will that allow editors to share their research, but it will provide a place for people to go for help if they want to add new articles but are a bit scared of the software. Now I just have to figure out how to add the subscribe form to the Wiki! Off to the mediawiki users forum! |
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