Hello again, readers of Another Long Yarn!

It’s been a few months since our KAL for Knit-A-Square and the creation of over 180+ squares for the orphaned and vulnerable children of South Africa. Squares are always needed so please feel free to keep them coming! (Postage info. can be found here.)

A special thanks to dear Zina for giving me the chance to share some exciting news on behalf of Knit-A-Square.

Knit-A-Square’s own Ronda Lowrie was featured as part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Mandela Day coverage. (If you are not familiar with Mandela Day you may want to read a blog post I wrote on All for Orphans.)

Not only did Ronda have a chance to speak about Knit-A-Square, informing the world that every day is Mandela Day for Knit-A-Square, but the video shows volunteers sorting and assembling squares from all over the world. It’s a touching story as it shows a range of the human experience; the joy and hopefulness of the global outpouring and tireless efforts of the local volunteers against a backdrop of footage shot in the shack settlement of Diepsloot. While there is clearly much work to do we can take heart in knowing we are doing this work together.

In a nutshell: the video is Not.To.Be.Missed. But maybe I’m biased, eh? It’s a short video. Why not view it for yourself and share your reaction in the comment section below?

If the video speaks to you and touches your heart, please share with your friends and family and spread the link through social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

Thank you to each and every Knit-A-Square supporter for making every day Mandela Day. Whether you are able to knit/crochet squares or have chosen to support the children with a small, monthly donation, please know that your contributions, like a stone cast in still water, have measurable effects. Together we are making a difference this winter to vulnerable children in South Africa.

You can join me at All for Orphans, the blog of KAS co-founder Sandy McDonald. I’ve been guest blogging there to help share KAS news and reflect on the issues concerning the orphaned and vulnerable children of South Africa.

A special thank you to Zina for all of her continued support of Knit-A-Square and for allowing me a slightly shameful opportunity for self-promotion- (oh please! it’s not promoting yourself at all, Dawne! Totally worthy cause! I’d be embarrassed NOT to support this! - editor) an opportunity to keep publicizing an important effort. But, hey! It’s for the children! 1.4 million of them and counting.

Wishing you each the best until we meet again in cyberspace,
Dawne

Cross your fingers for me! I’m hoping that the process goes smoothly. I’m headed home to California yet again, this time to meet up with my business partner, although I’ll also see my sisters again before leaving. Then back home to Colorado and then…back home to Cambridgeshire.

It’s the life of the expat. You’re happy to be going back home, but are also sad to be leaving home, even though you’ve been home the whole time.

I’ve started up another blog, Hearth, to show my friends and family our new flat as we turn it into our new home. Our landlady is trying to sell our sweet, cozy little house, so when the new flat came onto the market, we grabbed on for dear life. So, after all this packing, I’m going to get home and…yup, pack and move.

It’s an enormous place, and we have…hmm…I think ONE piano bench to our name, plus quite a bit of stash, books, and my craft stuff. And we’re hoping to only stay in the new flat for up to two years, is the plan right now, so we don’t want to end up with too much stuff…but we also are both too fussy to want to live hand to mouth, and we both like to feel proud of our place.

So stylish creativity will be king in the new flat for a while. Come visit the blog if you’re interested. I’d love to get new ideas for the flat from you, too!

And now…packing the last boxes, with the stuff I don’t think I’ll need for the last week I’m here. Will I ever be done with packing and moving things? I’ve gotten so much done today, but I’m so tired now I’m dizzy and slightly nauseous! Almost done with what I’ve got so far, so I think I’ll go to bed soon and hopefully arise with new energy.

I’ll check in when I can — see you all soon!

Anna of Mochimochi Tiny Perching Pigeons fame has released a new free pattern of tiny little alligators to celebrate the release of her new book, Knitting Mochimochi.  (You can also buy single patterns from her website.)

I discovered the joys of knitting little bitty animals last Christmas, when I made a small bat for Da Nephew, who loves bats. I sort of winged it (as it were) and came up with what I thought was a very sweet little bat.

However, not as cute as Anna’s little creatures.

I might actually do a few of her bitty brood to keep around to give as gifts.

Top down knitting. Barbara G. Walker.

Oooh, another book to buy that I just have to buy. Really. I have to buy it. I love top down knitting. And I truly admire (and come close to revere) Barbara Walker.

No announcement of when the title will release yet. Stand by for more.

They have some lovely patterns, but they have always seemed to have a very parochial viewpoint towards sizing. I nearly laughed my head off reading this week’s newletter from Margery Winter, which contained this comment: “While many of our model garments are knit to fit a fashion model whose (sic) 5′ 11″ tall with body measurements of 35, 25, 35, we are aware that it’s not a reality for most of us these days.”

Yes, once upon a time, that was not too atypical of women in terms of the measurements, but usually they weren’t 5′11″ — the average height used to be about 5′2″! (And, btw, where was the editor who allowed that sentence out in public?)

Maybe I’m being too harsh. I’m not sure what the editorial stance is on grading; perhaps it’s not so much a parochial viewpoint as perhaps they don’t have the budget to pay to have a pattern graded. There’ve been times when I’ve thought, what a lovely pattern, only to take a look at the thing and discover the pattern comes only in one size (I suspect to fit their model garment), which looks less like an actual wish to not accommodate plus sizes and more like people who have run out of money. (This jacket, Daiquiri, comes in only XS, S, and M, for instance. Yet it’s an almost perfect plus size design.)

If I really really like a pattern, sure, I’ll do the grading and mods myself, but often I just don’t have the time. Faster to pick another pattern in the correct size and only have to do a few mods here and there for perfect fit.

On the other hand, I don’t want to discourage Verena’s historically recent willingness to throw in some designs for plus sizes. So, plus size ladies, do take a look at Verena’s new plus size flip book from this issue of Verena. There are some really lovely patterns (as well as a couple duds, mind you, at least to my mind), so worth a peek.

The model is very pretty, being a Frenchwoman named Cielle who now lives in Miami. She is, of course, 5′11″!

Hmmm. I may go ahead and grade Daiquiri up to my size, or perhaps I’ll wait to knit it when I’m a size 12 again…it really looks like a very useful piece!

People often complain that Knitting Daily’s blog is nothing but advertising, and yeah, a lot of times, it is, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes there aren’t some very useful things offered by them. (And their online blog is a useful repository to search if you’re having a hard time finding information on a technique.)

This little PDF is a very useful collection of random tips to help your knitting look better.

Included in the PDF are:

• Useful cast-ons
• Making a French knot
• Working short rows
• Felting or blocking your pieces successfully
• Making an applied I-chord
• Doing a three-needle bind-off
• Finishing a project with pom poms and tassels
• Reverse single-crochet finish
• even more!

I’m going to put mine on both my phone and my iPad, so I’ll have them with me when I need them, very useful.

So make sure you take a bit of a break now and again. It’s good for you, actually. Good for your eyesight, your posture, your whole body. Get out! Move around! Then come back to the stitching.

Personally, I can’t seem to get excited about actually doing any knitting right now…and not just because of summer, either…too much going on!

After saying that I hadn’t tried iAnnotate, I thought perhaps I should give it a go.  Pricey for an app ($9.99), you can use it to read PDFs if you like, or you can go ahead and use another reader such as GoodReader and then use iAnnotate to mark up your PDF. At this point, I tend to think that it was worth the $10.

Why would you use GoodReader as well as iAnnotate? Well, from what I can see, iAnnotate is excellent at pulling PDF documents off the Web, but if you have patterns loaded down onto your computer or phone already, it’s a bit more difficult to get it directly into iAnnotate.

However, it’s fairly easy using GoodReader or ReadDLE to pull your document to the iPad and then markup using iAnnotate. Here’s the workflow I use on my iPad with GoodReader and iAnnotate, and it’s working out pretty well for me.

Let’s say you have a pattern PDF on your desktop or laptop (I’m on a MacBook), which is on a wireless network, along with your iPad.

Open up GoodReader on your iPad. On the bottom right, choose the WiFi Transfer icon, second from the left. The WiFi-transfer window opens. See where it says “Use one of the following addresses”? Leave this window up and move to your laptop or desktop.

On a Mac, in the Finder, choose Go > Connect to Server. A Connect to Server window opens. Under “Server Address”, enter the full IP-address exactly as you see it on the iPad in the WiFi-transfer window. Click Connect. Your desktop will now connect to the “server”, aka as your iPad. A window opens up titled with the IP-address of your iPad.

You may now simply drag and drop any files from your computer to your iPad or vice versa. When you’re done, click “stop” on your iPad in the WiFi-transfer window.

With me so far? (If you’re on a PC, iAnnotate does give pretty comprehensive notes in their support how to do the same thing on your PC.)

Okay, now let’s say you want to start knitting.

You’re already in GoodReader. (If you’re not, just open GoodReader.) On the left-hand side of GoodReader, you’ll see a list of all of your available documents. Make sure the one you want to open is showing in the list, and touch the Manage Files button on the right side of the screen. The list of documents will show radio buttons beside each file. Touch the radio button beside the document you want to open.

Over on the right, next to the Delete button, there’s a button that reads “Open In…” Touch this button. An “Open In” dialogue window opens. Choose iAnnotate PDF.

GoodReader closes, and iAnnotate opens with your document.

You can now use iAnnotate to mark up your document. (From here on out, so long as you want to see the marked up document, open it in iAnnotate rather than GoodReader. If you want a fresh, unmarked version of your document, go back to GoodReader and pull another copy into iAnnotate.)

So far I’ve used iAnnotate to help me track mods to a pattern, taking notes and saving the math on the PDF. I can use it as a row counter, but my preference is to use iPad for reading the pattern and marking it, and using one of the knitting apps on my iPhone as a counter. In fact, because you can’t use two apps simultaneously on the iPad, it’s handy to use my phone apps as calculator, counter, and other such miscellaneous apps, while keeping track of it all on the iPad in iAnnotate. This made it really handy when I was changing the gauge of a pattern and needed to track all the changes to the pattern for the new size in a new yarn.

You can make notes, highlight text, and draw (for a given definition of “draw”) on the PDF. Cross off a row on a chart, add a size to the pattern, flag a pattern change so you’ll remember to do it, whatever you like.

The developers seem to be pretty good at making requested changes, so stand by for improvements to the app in the future.

This has been pretty general, so if you have specific questions, let me know below and I’ll do my best to answer.

Anyone else have other uses for iAnnotate in your knitting that I haven’t found yet?

Next week: how to find apps, and some apps that you might not have considered using for your knitting.

Hmmm. I can’t quite decide if I like this one or not. It’s an interesting project; another of the free patterns from Caron. (They really are putting together some rather interesting projects these days.) The gathered yoke forms either a v-neck, boat neck, or wide scoop neck, depending on your mood and how tight you gather up the neckline.

I’ve a feeling that this one really needs the loose drape of some form of rayon or slinky acryclic or even a silk blend to look good — any amount of a stiff hand at all, and my bet is the thing would look less than flattering.

Can’t…quite…decide…  What do you guys think? Cute? Or only looks good on that skinny little mini model?

Wait, there’s more! The tutorial is here, so you can make your very own cupcakes!

Go on. You know you have to make them. They’ll go over totally well at your nearest knit night!