Friday, March 06, 2009

The knitting code

I studied web design for about a year, before waking up one morning and realising that I wanted to do something other than sitting in front of a computer for the rest of my working life. Selfish, I know - a job like that is for some people, just not for me. However, I still remember a fair amount of code from all the study I had to do, so it still catches my ear when I hear someone talking about it.

That's why this morning, listening to episode 73 of Cast-On on the train, I was intrigued to hear about KnitML - a coding language being developed to assist with knitting patterns! The aim is for designers to use KEL (Knitting Expression Language) to write a standard pattern in KnitML, which can then be not only translated into different languages and measurement systems, but also allow people to only find information relating to their size, and easily sub in other yarns and needles. What a brilliant idea! "KnitML was based on Laura Porter's vision to create a standard markup language for knitting patterns. She had noticed that patterns tended to be written using non-standard styles and abbreviations, so it was often difficult to convey meaning universally." (from the website) Jonathan Whitall was joking about it one day with his collegues, and is now looking at it seriously!

If you're interested, have a look at their website (complete with sample patterns) - and there's even a Ravelry group!

(Think all this code talk is too much for you? Take a look at the pattern you're working on. Do you know what 'ssk' is? Or 'k2tog'? Or 'YO'? Then you know some knitting code already!)

Knitting news

I'm still going on Buttony, although i'm no further along than the last time I talked about it. Why? About 4 inches into the increases I took a serious look at it to figure out how it was going to work, only to realise that i'd missed out a whole set of increases! So, I ripped back the whole thing and started again. I didn't mind so much, because that allowed me to cast on 90st instead of the 82 I had originally, which was looking a little small. I'm happier with it now :)

Random...

Martha Stewart is on Twitter!

~Happy Knitting!~

1 comments:

2BSewing: said...

Oh how cool is that??? KnitML. Quite catchy. In my numerous pattern readings (and I've read a lot), I've come across some patterns that appear to be written in a different language. This is a great idea.

Thanks for posting the links.

Hey...I can relate to sitting in front of a computer for most of my life. I'm ready for a change. ;)

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