A Commercial Venture
A week or so ago, one of the bussers at the Vietnamese restaurant that I frequent approched me and asked if I could make a sweater for this two-year old daughter. I gathered a couple of patterns that I had and showed them to him, and he picked out the Cabana Pullover from the Summer 2003 issue of Interweave Knits. It’s made from a chunky yarn on #9 needles, so it ought to go pretty fast. I’m going to see if I can get it and the first sleeve on the Aran done by the end of this month. I’ll be happy if I have the sleeve 1/2 done; I’ve got a couple other items I’m working on to.
Since this isn’t a piece for a friend or family member, I think it is appropriate to charge him for the work. I set the price at $100, which I figured was appropriate for a handmade (but not professional) item. I feel kind of weird about that, since I’ve always given my knitting away. Well, I did accept a free breakfast from the cook I made a Kufi for, and I let Roger buy me a beer after I made him a hat. But no cash ever changed hands. I’m sure I’ll get over the weirdness.
I’m also looking into a project having to do with knitting charts. I’ve seen a couple different methods of notation out there. I’d appreciate comments from people who use charts with references to the systems that they’ve used. My plan is to create a program that will take a text version of a pattern and generate the chart for it, and it should not be too terribly hard to make it output different chart types once I get the basic system done.
June 1st, 2003 at 8:29 pm
I’m torn between telling you that this is an incredibly cool idea and saying that you are a lovely, very geeky man.
Seriously, it sounds like this will blend your worlds together nicely. And I sense copyright possibilities…
June 1st, 2003 at 9:46 pm
$100?!!!! %^*&%!!! Maybe I SHOULD take up knitting again!!!
Either that or get back in touch with my friend in Austria, who knitted me 5 gorgeous sweaters just because life in Trebesing is so bloody boring.
Is this really what homemade sweaters go for?!!!
June 1st, 2003 at 10:35 pm
PS David, when I went to Macworld in 1996, I did see several software programs for knitting.
You probably have explored what is out there already, but I thought I’d mention it.
–Sheryl
June 1st, 2003 at 11:23 pm
Sheryl,
Actually, I haven’t really looked for any knitting software yet; I just had the idea and I think it would be reasonably easy to implement. Do you remember the names of any of the titles you saw?
June 2nd, 2003 at 12:24 am
David,
Not from 1996, no.
However, I just now entered “Knitting software” (with the quotes) in Google, and it came up with 1690 hits.
Here’s a link with knitting software reviews and resources. If you figure out the market, I’m sure you could fill in any niches out there, eh?
http://knitting.about.com/cs/software/
–Sheryl
June 2nd, 2003 at 8:56 am
This is a great idea! I love lace and aran knitting but I’m not fond of staring at page after page of written instructions. I haven’t heard of such programs, Mac or PC. (Also notice that there isn’t so many Mac programs as there are Windoze programs for knitting)
June 2nd, 2003 at 1:08 pm
I’ve been thinking some more about this; how would you code patterns that don’t give specific row-by-row instructions? For instance, I’m currently working a Berocco pattern that calls for systematic decreases based on length of the piece rather than by row. I suppose you could extrapolate based on gauge; is there another way I’m not thinking about?
Yep, I’m caught by this idea. Well done, D.
June 2nd, 2003 at 1:57 pm
Gosh! There does seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this idea. Maybe you should start taking orders, David.
If you can charge $100 just to knit a basic sweater, then certainly you should be able to ask that much for this software. Probably more, eh?
What do you think? $150 for the package? Girls, how many copies would you like? If your orders are confirmed, then it won’t matter if there are already 100 programs that do the same thing.
June 2nd, 2003 at 2:30 pm
Sheryl,
As far as the software goes, it’s going to be a part of this site; there won’t be a charge for using it.
Kaetchen,
I hadn’t considered that yet. All I’m thinking about at the moment is something that will take cable/lace directions as a string of letters and numbers and produce a graph.
Adding something like decreases based on length might be doable, but you’d have to enter gauge information ( 8 rows = 2″ ) for that to work.
Hm… intriguing idea…
June 3rd, 2003 at 9:48 am
Heres’ how you could do this - treat the comma as a delimiter. Set up built-in array that matches a letter combination such as “k2tog” with the relevant graphic image. Run it through a processor such that it breaks down the string, using the comma as delimiter and carriage return as eol (end of line). We use this logic in ColdFusion programming where we have to enter a list into the database (and vice versa, displaying in browser page).
June 3rd, 2003 at 9:56 am
Lola,
Yup, that’s about what I did for the first run of the parser. I added a regular expression to search for simple patterns like “k2″ and “p12″, rather than create an array for every possible knit and purl sequence.
June 16th, 2003 at 5:04 pm
$100.00 is preposterously cheap for a sweater. I wouldn’t consider anything under $150. which doesn’t start to cover the cost of materials. The stores that sell these hand-made sweaters have the overhead, shipping, mailing, employees,
to consider. In fact, $200.00+ is probably realistic. Good luck–you may need it.!!