Ravelry profiles

Posted 15 Apr 2015 by JC

With nearly 2000 stitch patterns in its public collection, Stitch-Maps.com is all about creating and viewing stitch maps. But sometimes it’d be nice to connect with the person who contributed a stitch pattern: to ask a question, or make a comment, or just see what else they’ve done. This is where Ravelry comes in.

How many of you are on Ravelry? Lots, I bet. So you already know it’s a fabulous resource for the yarny community. To tie Stitch-Maps.com to that community, we now have and icons, on each stitch pattern’s detail page, next to the contributor’s name:

Click the icon, and you’ll be taken to the contributor’s profile page on Ravelry. Click the icon, and you’ll be able to send them a message.

But wait! For any of this to work, you have to provide Stitch-Maps.com with your Ravelry username. It’s easy:

• If you’re new to Stitch-Maps.com, you’ll be asked for your Ravelry username when you register a free account.
• If you already have an account at Stitch-Maps.com, log in, then select Update contact info from your personal menu in the upper-right corner of every page at Stitch-Maps.com. Enter your Ravelry username, and click “Submit.”

That’s all there is to it! If Stitch-Maps.com knows a contributor’s Ravelry username, it’ll display the icon. If it knows your Ravelry username as well, it’ll display the icon too.

Enjoy!

Editing convenience

Posted 10 Apr 2015 by JC

For several months now, convenience buttons on the Contribute and Edit pages have let you enter the abbreviation for a symbol by clicking on a button. Now more convenience buttons make it even easier to enter the knitspeak for a stitch pattern, or to format its description.

What’s so awesome about these convenience buttons?

• You don’t need to know Markdown syntax to format the text in a stitch pattern’s description. To make some text bold, for example, select the text and click the button. Or click the button to insert a hyperlink. And here’s the icing on the cake: click the button to see a preview of your formatted description.
• Common knitspeak syntax is at your fingertips. Try this bit of fun: select yo, k2tog, click the “*x, repeat from *” button, and voilà! The selection changes to *yo, k2tog, repeat from *.

Side note: the convenience buttons below the “Written instructions” text area are now organized via a pop-up menu. This clears away the clutter previously caused by having nine (yes, count ’em, nine!) tabs.

Naturally, these changes have all been tested on a number of web browsers. But who knows? If your browser displays any weirdness – if the new convenience buttons don’t work as you think they should – please let me know!

Custom links

Posted 4 Mar 2015 by JC

Premium subscribers! This new feature is for you.

Say you have a stitch pattern you want kept “hidden,” such that no-one can find it by browsing through Stitch-Maps.com. Rather, you want to provide access via a link in the PDFs you sell. If someone can guess at the link – because, by default, the link is based on the name of the stitch pattern – then the stitch pattern isn’t hidden very well, is it?

Custom links to the rescue! On the Contribute page and on each stitch pattern’s Edit page, you’ll now see a “Link” edit box:

With this edit box, you can change the “subtle” portion of “http://stitch-maps.com/patterns/display/subtle” to anything you want. (Well, anything within reason: lowercase, sans whitespace and punctuation except for dashes and underscores.) Want a truly unguessable link? The dropdown menu to the right of the edit box has a “Generate random link” option that will create a link ending in something like “patt-4ec789da.”

Hopefully, those of you with premium subscriptions – or, more to the point, those of you selling PDFs with links to Stitch-Maps.com – will find this feature useful. But, as with any new feature, if its behavior seems screwy or you have questions or concerns, please let me know!

By request

Posted 31 Dec 2014 by JC

By request, Stitch-Maps.com now recognizes 1/2/1 and 2/2/2 cable crosses:

• 1/2/1 LC
• 1/2/1 LPC
• 1/2/1 RC
• 1/2/1 RPC
• 2/2/2 LC
• 2/2/2 LPC
• 2/2/2 RC
• 2/2/2 RPC

Also, it now supports another cluster stitch:

• Sl1-k2-psso

By my count, this brings Stitch-Maps.com to a whopping 201 symbols. Whew! 2014 was certainly a big year for expanding the kinds of stitch patterns that could be mapped. Here’s looking forward to 2015, which (I’m hoping!) will bring improvements to the site’s usability and its visualization capabilities.

Estonian gathers

Posted 29 Dec 2014 by JC

Nupps are a distinctive feature of Estonian lace. So are “gathers,” places where several stitches are worked together to create several new stitches – for example, five stitches might be worked together in such a way as to create three new stitches, or three stitches might be gathered together to create seven stitches. These gathers, as the name implies, pull the fabric into lacy little knots that permit all sorts of textural interest. Quatrefoil, a traditional Estonian pattern, is a good example:

Of course, gathers can be used in non-traditional patterns too. Consider Beetles:

Now you can map gathers at Stitch-Maps.com, using these symbols:

• 2-to-2 gather
• 2-to-3 gather
• 3-to-2 gather
• 3-to-3 gather
• 3-to-5 gather
• 3-to-7 gather
• 3-to-9 gather
• 5-to-3 gather
• 5-to-5 gather
• 5-to-7 gather
• 5-to-9 gather
• 7-to-3 gather
• 7-to-5 gather
• 7-to-7 gather
• 7-to-9 gather

A huge reason to map gathers is so that you can see precisely which stitches are to be gathered together. You can then be sure to knit these stitches very loosely on the previous row, making it much, much easier to knit all of them together as part of the gather. (Otherwise, creating the gather becomes a hair-pulling experience. Ask me how I know!)

Want to see more stitch maps with gathers? Check out these examples. Note that, at this point, only a few have corresponding swatch photos. But if you want to be notified when new swatch photos become available, remember that you can make use of our new Swatch photos RSS feed.

Enjoy!