Saturday, February 14, 2009

Automatic Short Row Pillow

My earlier post on form programmes generated quite a bit of controversy. Apparently, some people insist that form programmes are uncrackable and that anyone who claims they understand what the numbers mean is clearly lying or deluded. Sometimes old beliefs are hard to let go of. Once folks believed sun revolved around the earth and Galileo begged to differ. I am no Galileo and certainly he paid a much heavier price for bringing his piece of knowledge to the world than I did. A few hot e-mails cannot harm me much. I do wish, though, that people would be more open to new ideas.

That said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. I offer my automatic short row pillow as that proof. This pillow is knit with the aid of a form programme I wrote myself. The piece is knitted in six wedges with the front and back being knitted simulatenously. The form programme takes care of all the shaping and so this pillow is very easy to knit despite its complex shape.

And thus, another form programme is brought into the world. Knit this pillow to remind yourself about Galileo, the infinite possibilities of the universe, and the importance of staying open minded. (but not so open your brains fall out :-)

Enjoy,

Jenny.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jenny.
I’m a former PASSAP M-201 knitter and have recently taking the plunge into a Pfaff duomatic. Along the duomatic came a form computer and the manual, but not the power supply, luckily I found one on ebay. It works fine. It’s not the console.

I have a grandmotherly interest in baby clothing and think the 5 patterns provided in the manual aren’t enough. I became very happy, when I found your article “Form Programmes Explained”; it really made me understand most of these cryptic lines for the form computer. Surprisingly most of the commands are working well with the form computer.

I’ve tried to transform some of my best patterns from a sketch to a form programme, and the instructions from the form computer seem to be exactly those I wanted. I still have some difficulties making a slit at the neckline. My programmes are not suitable for publication (yet), but I can manage.

I don’t think it’s worth the effort making a programme, if one only makes a single piece of knitting, but if you are making 6 identical tiny woolen undergarments, I find that a programme makes ones work a lot easier. I tend to dream along while I’m knitting and ooops, the piece of garment is suddenly twice as long as it’s supposed to be. This won’t happen using the form computer and a homemade programme.

Thank You very much for your effort.

Best regards

Bente

PS. Do you consider a Light Edition of Journal Six, only the database? Oldies (I learned programming back in 1965 at the Technical university of Denmark) like myself who hasn’t a console/E6000, can’t make much use of the designing part of Journal Six, although it looks very tempting.

Jenny said...

Hi, Bente.

Thanks so much for you comment. It made my day. I too fall asleep at the machine and like the form programmes to remind when to decrease, etc.

Regarding Journal Six, I have thought about spinning off the image processing and sketchbook into a separate program for non-E6000 users, but I hadn't really thought about doing a database only version. Interesting idea.

Congratulation on writing your own form programmes. Don't be shy about publishing them. I bet there are lots of other people who would be glad to have them.

Take care,

Jenny.