November 2015

Of course that leads to an obvious question... could I knit one instead?

23/11/2015

STAR WARS IS COMING!

Less than a month!

I may be overexcited!

Here, knit your loved ones a nerd scarf!

22/11/2015

Complete Coincidence

Lets imagine that you're in a big room full of people, each with a piece of grid paper and a pencil. Now imagine that you are all asked to colour in boxes on your piece of paper such that they form a heart shape. It has to look good too, you're trying to impress. Some people draw big hearts that fill the whole page, some people draw tiny, fluttering hearts in a corner. There are stripy hearts, lopsided hearts, any type of heart shape that you can imagine.

How likely is it that two people in the room draw exactly the same heart?

Lets take it a step further. All the pieces of grid paper are different sizes. Some are the size of teabags, others the size of handkerchiefs, one person has a square the size of a picnic blanket. The grids can be different too. While most people have perfect little squares, others have rectangles.

Still it's possible, in a room full of people, that two will colour in squares in exactly the same pattern.

The activity is repeated. This time you're asked to draw keys, a tree, then a moustache, or a bad ass millennium falcon. How likely is it now that two people colour in exactly the same pattern of boxes multiple times in a row?

I'm asking because I was recently sucked into a debate with someone regarding a knitting chart design. Their argument being it was complete coincidence that the knitting chart they were selling exactly replicated fourteen of my pictures designs, six fair isle borders from the same project and contained no other elements at all.

Complete coincidence.

(You may have previously read my tumblr rant on this subject. Apologies for bringing it up here as well, but writing helps me sooth the bewildered irritation.)

I was also treated to an in depth explanation of how they supposedly produced the charts using crafting software to pixelate images and just – that is not a good approach at all for detail rich subjects. It does not take into account the rectangular shape of the stitches you get in knitting, nor the simplification necessary to get a coherent image in grid form. Fudge it. I'm annoyed again. They were so wrong I'm going to have to write a tutorial.

Revenge through instructional blog entries!

Fear not though, I will have a proper pattern up this month as well. I'm still going to knit myself a moustache and my knitting covered hair clips will soon be ready to reveal.