Tag Archives: Yarning

Image Generation on Granny Squares

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It’s been a while since I’ve done anything significant on my Granny Square Pattern Generator (GSC), and since I’ve already contributed to a game release this week, I figured I hadn’t quite checked enough “public-facing actions” boxes this week until I did some work on GSC.

Biggest missing feature (and biggest complaint!) is that blankets weren’t printable. Now they are!

Log in with something like Facebook or Twitter, generate a blanket, and save the blanket. When you look at the details of the blanket, you can now get it as a printable image, and toggle between the two styles of seeing the blanket.

My next task is to make authentication more seamless.

Techie Bits

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Granny Squares, Now in Color

A pretty ugly blanket generated by the Granny Squares app.Many moons ago, I debuted my Granny Squares Color Pattern Generator, a utility to help crocheters randomize their blankets, which can be a daunting task.

I recently got a request for a way to help visualize the blanket that’s generated. It’s hard to work from a list of “r/h/p”-type entries. Not very user-friendly.

So I added in a color picker today, and the generator now shows the colors of the squares. As a warning, if you have a lot of very similar colors, the generated image may be difficult to work from. Then again, if your blanket’s in 15 shades of purple (yes, please!), you may not need this utility.

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First Ever Sock (and Other Yarning)

Having already made Gregory a blanket, my next task was to craft up some house socks for him. His current pair were worn to holeyness and ready to be replaced.

I dread the idea of working on super-fiddly projects, so I opted to go for a pair of crocheted socks using worsted weight yarn. Cotton, in my case, because acrylic on your feet would be for the birds. The main sock is black, and the heel is brown, despite Greg’s worrying singing of “Black Socks“. Plus, cotton crochets quite beautifully–no fuzz means the pattern shows very well.

The heel was disturbingly confusing to me, quite possibly because I had a raging sinus headache at the time. Once I realized that the sock as I’d been working it was inside out and I played around with how the heel would unfold, everything made sense. There were only about 7 stiches that closed up the heel, so it was totally worth stitching and unstitching to make sure I understood what would happen.

We shan’t talk about the extra stitches in the body of the sock I had to swallow up shortly therafter, though.

…First sock!

It went really fast, which is nice. One more gaming session, and the second sock should be done. More satisfying than a dice bag (cute though that one is), less agonizing than a blanket, even a piecemeal one.

The addition of a new afghan pattern book to my (now 4-book) library means that I’ll soon have more pretty things to give away.

Edit: Finished the sock late last night!

Chewing on Granny Squares

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My knitting colleague E. made the (arguably) goofy decision to refresh her crocheting skills by taking on a granny squares blanket.

It’s a great idea for using up a ton of scrap yarn.

It’s not a great idea if you enjoyed the level of sanity you had when you started.

She quickly ran into the classic self-randomizing problem: given 20 different colored yarns of different weights, how do you put 3 different ones in each square while trying to keep the colors as random as possible? Sounds easy enough, but after 15 or so squares, it gets tricky. If you’re aiming for randomization, the last thing you want is a big diagonal of purple in your blanket when you’re done.

So E. appealed to me and asked me to write her a “script” to randomize her colors. I was on board, look forward to some Python/Django fun before I realized that what I’d been handed was a graph coloring problem with some fun restraints. (Turns out it was easy, but fun to think through.)

Before I get into the technical bits, go make a blanket or two. Then go find some esoteric method to contact me (or comment here) and let me know what you think, especially if you run into an issue.
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Project Complete: Bir’day Blanket!

In a desperate crush this weekend, I finished Greg’s blanket. It wasn’t that I was four months late finishing it, it was that I was so. tired. of basketweave.

If I had to do one more damn repeat, I was probably going to put the thing on hiatus, silly as that would have been.

The finished product is long enough for Greg to stretch out and pretend to sleep under:

Greg stretched out with the blanket.

Unfortunately, I have some of the eggplant yarn left. Anyone need a dice bag? If I can find a good contrasting color in my stash, I’ll probably do at least one of these.

I spend a half hour or so on Sunday night completely frogging (unraveling) my brown blanket and starting up again. I swear, the first row of crocheting (crocheting into the chain) is the worst and most fiddly. Plus, it was a 196 stitch chain, so that first row took forever. That’s wider than my arm span–this thing is going to be a blanket, not a throw.

Since then, though, it’s been smooth sailing; all the stitching is consistent (for me), my color and ball changes are proper, and I friggin’ know what stitch I’m doing.