Looped Bracelets

Knitting
I couldn't help it, I cast on for a Looped Bracelet on Saturday, and cast off too. I found some very vivid sock yarn in my stash. I can't remember what this was, Regia or something, but I knitted a baby hat out of it once.

When I had knitted a couple of stripes of the bracelet I discovered that I had already 'edited' the yarn and taken stripes out of it, leaving large knots behind but I couldn't bear to rip it back so I had some ends to weave in later. This is the clever bit.

Those are 2mm needles. The instructions are beautifully clear, as always with Lynne, and I was amazed at how easy it was. Here it is.

And the other way up.


I've already cast on two more - I couldn't decide between yarns so I started them both. The one on the right is some Koigu in the purps and pinkles of summer pudding and I can't remember what the other one is.


Lynne has got some other bracelet patterns on her website. I've bought Wave and expect I won't be able to resist casting on, just as soon as I have a pair of toothpicks free.

Virtual Knitting
How have you survived without any Knitting apps, Lisa? Not that I ever use any of mine, it has to be said. I'm glad you asked though, I've been meaning to write about the Vogue Knitting App for the iPhone / iPod Touch. It costs $3.99 or £2.39. You can add information about Projects, Needles, Hooks, Yarn and Books. It containds a Stitchionary, a How-To and a list of terms and Abbreviations, and has a calculator for substituting yarn.

The info about Projects doesn't link to a database, and neither does the section for recording your stash - none of it does, but I mention these because we've come to expect a pattern database and a yarn database if we've been using Ravelry. It does however enable you to record where you are in a project, row counts and increases and decreases.

The Stitchionary is odd, to say the least. Divided into Knit and Purl, Cables, and Colourwork, the selection seems arbitrary and the examples are shown in no order that I can detect. They're drawn from the volumes of the Vogue Stitchionary but I didn't see a copyright notice (I didn't look very hard, but it should be unmissable). Even the website doesn't indicate that the Stitchionary is a series of books.

I can't really see what this is for, or rather who and when. Given that the gadget that it's for has internet access and you could look these things up in a more organized fashion, I can't see why you would want to carry around this random selection. Is it useful to have a chart for leopard print when you're on the move? The same chart is available on the website anyway, without paying $3.99.

The whole thing has that VK air of lacking joined-up thinking, and there are existing apps which perform all of these functions and although I suppose it's handy to have them together, the thing is done with so little flair that it certainly didn't make my heart beat faster. I know that having done such things on an industrial scale professionally, I tend to underestimate the charms of recording one's projects or cataloguing the stash, but I can't see why anyone would record projects here when they could do the same on Ravelry (without the row counter, but still). Maybe someone who uses knitting apps on their iPhone will put me right about this.

To me, it just highlights how much we need a Ravelry app. There is one in the works and I can access the website of course, but something more specific would be zippier and possibly not such a strain on the eyesight.

Pure Tech
For those of you who are interested in the Huawei E5830, it is also apparently the same thing as the Netvigator - you might find the information given here helpful. Don't ask me any questions, though, cos I don't understand any of it!