Twofer

Posted 19 Oct 2018 by JC

Today’s update is a twofer:

Part 1: exporting a collection’s key

Premium subscribers have long had the ability to export a stitch pattern’s key. Now they can also export the key for an entire collection. This key will define all the symbols used in all the stitch patterns in the collection. For example, here’s the key for my Short-rowed doilies collection:

As you’d expect, it contains symbols for short-row turns, since every pattern in the collection uses them. It also contains bind-off symbols, even though Diamond Doily doesn't use them, because the other patterns do. And it contains the cast-on symbol, even though Diamond Doily is the only stitch pattern that uses that symbol.

I’m pretty keen to use this feature myself. I figure it’ll be super useful when I’m putting together the handouts for the classes I’m teaching. Imagine this: create a collection containing all the stitch patterns shown in the handouts, export the collection’s key, put the key into the handouts as well, and boom! no need to worry about the handouts not defining a crucial symbol.

Part 2: user interface tweaks

Adding an action item for “export this collection’s key” nudged me into making a couple mostly cosmetic changes. First off, the sidebars on a few pages were looking a little cluttered, so I’ve made the sidebar panels collapsible. Initially, only the first panel is open, but you can open more with a quick click – for example, for the Short-rowed doilies collection:

Then I put icons for commonly-used actions next to each stitch pattern’s name, and added icons next to action item links – for example, for Diamond Doily:

Hopefully you’ll enjoy these little improvements. As always, if you have questions or concerns, please speak up! Start a conversation in the Stitch Maps group on Ravelry, or contact me directly.