Using DAK to Create a Quilt

I have been looking at the quilts that have offset crosses or pluses and want to make a baby quilt using this pattern.  I'm a little challenged where patterns using geometrics are concerned so thought I'd use DAK to help me out.

I knew I wanted a quilt that was about 36" x 48".  DAK presents each stitch as a rectangle so I pretended they were square.  I don't know if you can change that.  So I needed squares that measure
3 1/2" inches to allow for the 1/4" seams and that determined how many "stitches" I would fill in.
12 squares wide and 15 squares long were what was needed counting the borders.  I left all the default colors in the palette in place so I'd have enough to choose from to make the pluses stand out.  Depending on the pattern being designed, a person could choose just those colors to match the fabric that would be used.

This might sound elementary to you or maybe even stupid (!) but it helped me see where the squares need to be placed to get the off- set pluses.  Here's what I got:

DAK wouldn't let me print out the design as is because it was too many colors for fairisle. But by going Options, knitting method, intarsia and saving it that way, DAK would print.  However, I needed to use the single tool to enlarge the pattern to 200% to make it useful.  This is printable this way.   One nice thing is that DAK numbers the columns.  Another help in placing your plus blocks. After the design is printed, you could number the blocks to match the fabric being used.

The picture shown here was a screen shot of the design in DAK and copied to the Paint program.  Any image processing program could be used.  You can also copy the design to the clipboard right from DAK and paste it.  The nice thing about Paint is that it is simple to use, most all pc's have the program and you can resize the picture as large as you need it.

From this point, a person would figure out the 9 patch blocks and draw them in.  It seems to me that there's no easy way to do this... but then again, maybe it's my little "problem" rearing its head again.  You could do your 9 patches this way:

or include the border patches this way?

just pluses or horizontal strips???

I guess I should go hunting on YouTube and find out the best way to do this.  At least now I know what the crosses are supposed to look like.  Some quilt patterns are just not going to work, though. 

Especially those with half square triangles.  But lots will work.  Maybe it can help you too. 

Prayer Shawl

A very generous friend, Bonnie in Vermont, sent our guild (the Machine Knitting Guild of Minnesota) some luscious yarn.  Lots of luscious yarn.   She's downsizing and we are upsizing!  I wanted to show guild members what one single cone  would produce.  This one was from Webs. called Crystal and is made of acrylic and nylon. 2000 yards. There were many cones of this kind of yarn and sometimes people can't think of what to do with it since it is quite thin. 

 I knit a tuck stitch prayer shawl with a built in tuck pattern, 144 stitches x 900 rows.  (Yup, not a typo.)  Then I did a kind of twirly edging and ended up with about 2 yards of yarn left!!!

It's about 7 feet long by 24" wide.  Enough, I think, to wrap around shoulders.  If you want a little more specific directions, here goes. And, just about any yarn goes.

This one done on a Standard gauge machine but the idea could be adapted for any gauge machine.

Tension 7 (or whatever works with your yarn)  Start with waste yarn and knit a few rows to get going over 144 needles.

Ewrap cast on over these 144 needles with main yarn.  RC 000.  Knit 10 plain rows.  Set up machine for tuck using any tuck pattern built in or a punch card or hand manipulate if you are patient and persistent.  Nah, that's just crazy.  Knit to RC 890, turn off tuck, knit 10 rows plain and bind off using your favorite bind off.

EDGING:   Try it on a swatch of the same type of yarn to see if you need to skip some shawl stitches as you go around, especially on the long sides.  Skipping some prevents a ruffle.  Unless you want a ruffle, that is.

Begin at the far right of your needle bed.  With the wrong side facing you=== for tuck this would be the knit side==== starting in the middle of one side of the shawl, pick up and hang 3 edge stitches of the shawl with your 3 prong tool.  Don't just pick up a loop, but a little more to make it substantial.  Knit 6 rows.  No need for weights because the shawl weighs it down.  Pick up and hang 3 stitches to the left of those in work,  K6 rows.  *Pick up and hang  3 more stitches to the left of those in work, hang the far right 3 stitches onto the 3 stitches to the left of them.  (There will be 2 stitches on each of those 3 right needles.) 6 stitches in work now. Push emptied needles out of work each time.  Knit 6 rows.*   Repeat from * to *.  When you get to a corner, knit 8 rows rather than the 6  to get around the corner without a pucker.  At the end, bind off and join to the beginning stitches, leaving a 12" yarn tail.  Tidy up by sewing by hand with the tail of the main yarn.

Note that you'll be traveling down the bed, so you will most likely have to take off stitches and move them back to the right a few times.  ok, quite a few times.  I just use a double eyed needle to put the stitches on and move them.

This edging has lots of uses, baby blankets for one,  and looks ok from both sides.  It tames the edges so they don't curl.  Don't know where I got it or what it's called.

I steamed the shawl quite aggressively and it turned out pretty nice.  I'll be donating it to a local nursing home.  Red is cheerful, don't you think?

Thank you yarn angel Bonnie---your yarn will be put to good use!

Norwegian Sweaters

Here's a picture of some of the guild members who took my Norwegian sweater class.  Actually, another gal and I taught it together over a period of 3 months.  We systematically took one step at a time.   None of the class participants had knit fairisle before, much less a whole sweater.  I'm proud of them!!! They all did the same basic pattern with slight modifications.  All were done on the standard gauge machine.   Plans to knit more are in the works.

Bitten by the Gimp Bug

It's hard these days to figure out a gift for little kids that isn't plastic or something 80 million other kids have.  So, for Christmas, I converted some relatives' images to knit stitches and made pillows.  (They are sisters.)

I used Gimp (free download) and Designaknit to create the images.  I paid attention to the number of pixels for the width but forgot to calculate length for the Ruby pillow.  Geesh.  It turned out Ok, but it's one of those little regrets when all is said and done. Her dad says she's in love with it----slept with it for a week in her little tent----so I guess that's all that matters.


For info on how to use Gimp, I followed the instructions here:  http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Producing_a_stippled_image_with_Gimp  an excellent tutorial.
Then I used DAK's Graphic Studio to convert the picture to a knit design.  It's not too difficult, but I think I did mess around a bit to get the amount of shading that looked good.  I did fairisle because it's so fast and the floats are hidden inside the pillow.  The back of the pillow is just plain stockinette in the darker color, then seamed on 3 sides.   Once steamed lightly the stitches stay in place.  I'm sure if you like double bed jacquard, that would work just as nicely. Also, there are other programs that work for this, not just DAK.  Ravelry and Facebook have a lot of examples.


Kind of fun, pretty easy.  You might want to give it a try.