Those for whom knitting is a hobby are often engaged in it from time to time. Therefore, developing the necessary skills without gaining special knowledge and constant experience requires quite a lot of time. And one of the problematic moments is the complexity of counting rows in the process of knitting.
Especially if you take the same amigurumi toys, etc. Of course, you can try the old-fashioned way of counting each row with his notebook pen. But in the 21st century, with its technological development, to do so is somehow even indecent.
Therefore, it is worth looking at specialized sites where there are all kinds of free laptop programs designed specifically for knitting. And there, perhaps to the surprise of some people, there is a lot of useful software:
- WinKnit – a handy program that helps in making schemes of knitting patterns with needles;
- Tamica is a calculator for calculating buttonholes;
- Mnemosina – a utility program that simplifies the knitting pattern calculation process;
- iKnit Needle Sizer – a program that helps to determine the optimal thickness of the hook and needle;
- Szawl.eu – an online knot generator.
It should be noted today it is difficult to find an area of human activity for which developers would not have created the appropriate software. For example, the SportZone app satisfies the needs of those who love to watch sports events. At the same time, the utility itself weighs less than one megabyte and has versions for both PC and mobile devices.
Or you can consider another example – XeXMenu. Using this program, gamers who play on both PC and Xbox 360 can transfer games on a flash drive directly to the console along with the saves.
But getting back to yarn, it’s worth taking a look at whether programs really help with the knitting process. And for that, we can look at the interface of one of the popular row-counting utilities.
Knitting row counting software: interface and features
- Personal cabinet. By opening it, users can manually keep track of the rows connected. And it is already more convenient than a pen in a notebook. But the program presents another pleasant surprise in this respect in the form of voice control through the Next step function. How does it work? During the knitting process, just say out loud Next before starting a new row. And then, the program will automatically mark the next row.
- Projects. For each thing knitted, the program allows you to set a separate project. This is convenient because the utility has a built-in timer. And at the end, you will be able to see how long this or that thing was knitted. To start knitting a new thing, you just need to click on the icon depicting a ball of red thread.
- Pattern. This section allows you to load into the program previously downloaded documents with knitting schemes from the Internet. Moreover, the utility supports the opening of PDF files, which is very convenient because most of the patterns are available in documents of this format.
- Courses. If you prefer, you can buy a video course on knitting. Most of these master classes are in English but sometimes come across versions in other languages – Spanish, Russian, etc.
- Tools. In this section, you will find three useful functions that allow you to adjust the pattern, change the unit of measure for more suitable for you (meters, yards, centimeters), and calculate the amount of used yarn. The last feature is especially valuable because it gives you the opportunity to recalculate the yarn so that you won’t have enough to finish the thing.
Above described only the main useful features, but in fact, the program hides a lot of nice little things. However, this is already enough to understand how such software simplifies the technical part of knitting.
