In this video, I'm going to talk about customizing
the counters in knitCompanion a little bit more. We're going to cover simple counters and linked
counters. And if you're new to knitCompanion, you haven't tried it yet, just go to the
Apple App Store or the Google Play store and search for knitCompanion, one word, and you can
download the free version of the software, which is very robust. It has a ton of features that
you'll use most. It's a great way to interact easily with your PDF patterns, keep track
of where you are with the highlighter bar, it has the counters. It stays awake the whole
time you're using it. It is a great app. I think everybody who tries it likes this app, but I'm
always concerned that someone's going to say, "Oh, I'm curious about knitCompanion. I want to give
it a try." And they're going to watch this video first. Don't watch this video first. I have other
knitCompanion videos in the series. Just click little "i" in the upper right-hand corner. I'll
put a link in the video description field below of my playlist of videos. Watch the first
video first on the basics of the software. I just don't want anyone to feel overwhelmed by the software if they watch this one first, because
I'm going to be talking about things, assuming that people are a bit familiar with the software
and not just being introduced to it today. The things I'm going to talk about are simple
counters and linked counters. Simple counters are available in the basic version of the software
and the linked counters are available in the essentials, the second tier of the software. And
this is available for both Apple and Android. And when I'm talking about people feeling overwhelmed
with the software, I had this story, my own story here happened a couple of days ago. I was
starting a new project, knitting a fairisle hat. I'm kind of on a fair isle hat kick right now. And
I opened the pattern in my iPad and I had the app recognize the chart and got one tap chart set
up. And I realized after I did it, that it took me about 10 seconds. You know, I'm learning this
software along with you, knitCompanion sends me the topic for the next video and I learn it
and I practice it and then I can show you. These things are still kind of new to me
when I make the videos, but with practice, this stuff becomes so second nature and so easy,
just like with knitting, just like with anything that you get to know...I feel like I
know the software now. I know what to expect it to be able to do. I know the basics
of, you know, the edit and the setup and the plus button and what these things can do. So,
just with practice and getting a chance to use the features that you like the most, it does
become very much second nature and very easy. So, again, don't watch this video first, watch
the other videos first. Okay. Let's talk about linked counters and how those are useful. When
you're working on a pattern, I know you've seen this before, those words at the same time,
where you have multiple things going on that will require multiple counters. Here's an
example. You're knitting a sweater and it has a big cable down the front, and that is a
20 row repeat, right? So, that's one counter. And then on either side of that big cable, you
have another cable that's different and that's a 12 row repeat. It's two counters. And then
also at the same time you have waist shaping, for example, that's a third counter. You could set
up three counters, three basic counters and tap, tap, tap. Every time you complete a round tap
three times to advance those three counters. Or you can link those counters, tap once, have all
three of them advance together. It's a very cool feature and well, I'm excited to show you because
I'm really enjoying this feature of the software. So, is that all I had to say upfront here? Yes.
Let's take a look. Okay. So, here I am in my project. This should look pretty familiar to you
if you're familiar with the software. I have this project called "Cabled Fingerless Mitts," and I
picked this one, this is one of my own patterns, I picked this one because we have a big cable
running up the mitt, and then at the same time, we do the thumb gusset. And this is a simple way
for me to show you how the linked counters work. But first, let's talk about the regular counters
over here that I'm sure you've used on every project so far. You tap them to advance, right?
And if you long tap, you get the name of...whoops, I just touched the screen. You long tap, you get
the name of the counter, the value, and you can frog one row to jump back or tap
the reset button to set it back to zero or the original number. And then
you tap the screen to get rid of it. And that's in the basics version. Now, if you
have the essentials version in Android or Apple, you can tap the edit button up here, which
gives you a lot more options with the counters. So, over here in the menu on the right, you see
the little abacus, you tap that, and this will let you customize the counters. You can name
them. I'm going to name this one "Big Cable," and you can change the color to a different color
if you like. And then here, you can change the direction of the counter. This is counting
from 0 to 999. You can have it count down which I just did. So, it's counting the
other way. And I'm going to have it count just to 10. And then the count by
is...this is going to count by ones, but you can set that to count by twos or threes
or whatever number you want. So, let's take a look at what that looks like. And here, you
can customize all of the counters over here. Let's take a look at what that
looks like by tapping knit again. And now, you see this counter
that I just customized, it says 10 because when I tap it, it's going
to count backwards from 10. And when it gets to 0, it goes back to 10 again. It's just
going to keep repeating 10 to 0, 10 to 0. And if I long tap, I can see the name of the
counter in case I ever get confused and I have a bunch of counters going. So, that's customizing
these counters here. So, let's take a look at getting linked counters set up because we do have
all these things going on in this mitts pattern, and I want to set it up so that these counters
are linked, so I can tap once and have them all advance or both of them in this case. So, I go
to edit up here, and then we used the abacus the first time, now we're going to use the abacus
with the little link icon next to it. And that's how we set up linked counters. And just like with
everything in knitCompanion, I've got this plus key here, I'll tap that. And you get two options,
an action counter or a repeat counter. And you'll see how different those are because I'm going to
set up one of each. This is going to be a repeat counter because the big cable pattern is a 20
row repeat that I do twice. So, I'm going to say repeat, and here we have options that are in the
simple counters as well. I can change the color. And for this one, the counter runs from 1 to
20 just like I said, and it repeats twice. Okay. Here, I'm almost done with this already,
here the start row I want to leave at 1 and I'm going to leave manual start off. We're
going to talk about manual start when I set up the next one, but you can set the start
row at whatever you want. And if you have multiple counters going on, it might be that you
want to start the...well, let me put it this way. Let's say that this pattern says, "Start the thumb
gusset on row 15 of the cable pattern." In my next counter, I would put start row at 15 for that.
We'll talk about that in a minute because I'm not doing the thumb gusset yet. This is the big
cable. So, I actually have that all set up now, and I could just tap knit and start
working with that counter if I wanted to, or because these are linked, I'd like to set
up another one to link them together. So, I'll tap the plus button again, and this time, I'm
going to set up an action counter. So, I tap that. And I'm going to name this one thumb gusset. And the action here is
increase twice between markers. Okay. So, thumb gusset, increase twice between
markers. How many times am I going to do it? I'm going to do it eight times. How often? This
is how many rounds, right? I'm going to do it every other round. So, the number here would be
2. If I left at 1, it would be every round, right? The start row, we're going to talk about this
again, start row and manual start. In this pattern, it doesn't tell me to start the thumb
gusset at row 15 like the example I gave. It says to start the thumb gusset once you have 6.5 inches
of the mitt knit. That needs to be a manual start. I need to measure to see when I hit 6.5 inches
to let the software know. So, that's all set up. I'm happy with that. So, I can just go to knit.
I just put hand lotion on my hands. I wonder if that makes a difference in touching the screen.
So, now, here, down here in the bottom window, I have my linked counters. This big, green button
is the one button that I need to tap when I finish a round, because that's the one that's keeping
track of everything else because these are stuck together. This first one here, the 1 through 20,
start at row 1. That's my big cable. This one here is the thumb gusset. And you see in the thumb
gusset, it says, "every 2 rows, thumb gusset, tap to start." Remember I hit manual start.
So, once I hit 6.5 inches, I can tap that to have that counter start for me. Okay. So, I'm
going to start advancing through these rows. The fastest knitter in the world advancing
through these rows. And you see, in this counter, first of all, it's not grayed out anymore because
it's an active counter and you see the number here is the number here and that's going to
become important in just a second, 9, 10, Okay. This is a 20 row 20 round cable, right?
So, I have this set up to count from 1 to 20. And once I hit 21, this counter goes back to 1 so I
know which row I'm on in the cable pattern. The big counter is counting all of the rows. This one
is counting which row I'm on in the cable pattern. Okay. So, I wanted to show you that that's going
to advance there and there. Let's say I've hit 6.5 inches in my knitting. I'm ready for this
one to start. So, I start that one. Look at here, now I have a To Do, increase twice between the
markers. So, everything I need is right here. That's my cable. That's my thumb gusset. Those
are my instructions for this round. Next round, no thumb gusset instructions because I was only
doing that every other row, right? So, this one, I'm on row 3 of the cable pattern, no instructions
for the thumb gusset, again, because this is every other round. My thumb gusset instructions
come up and I'm on row 4 for the cable pattern. Isn't that great? And this isn't it. You can
be knitting along with a pattern and you know, let's say you are working on a sweater and
the waist increases don't come until later, you can go to edit and add...go to linked
counters and add a third linked counter keeping all of those together. And I
guess one other thing I want to show you is once you... The fastest knitter in the world
here, right? Maybe I shouldn't have set that one at 20. Okay. So, I have finished all of my
thumb gusset stitches and you see this one grayed out again. I'm done with that one. I'm not
going to get any more thumb gusset instructions. Isn't that great? Because I told it ahead of time
what I had in my pattern and what I needed from these link counters. And this one continues
to go. I'm on 18 of the second 20 row repeat. And now both of them are grayed out. I've finished
these instructions. It's probably time for me to start finishing this mitt or whatever comes next.
I think that's it. Let me check my notes. Yes. And that is it. Next month, we have another
knitCompanion video on smart counters. And I'm not quite sure what those are yet, but
according to knitCompanion, it seems like they are colleagues or friends or opposites or
something. That's more to do with the counters. I'm looking forward to learning it
and showing you. Again, if you would like to get the knitCompanion app, just go to the
Google Play Store or the Apple App Store and search for knitCompanion, one word.
And that's it for this time. Good luck.
