Knitting Help - knitCompanion (Video 1)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] in this video I'm going to introduce you to knit companion which is software for knitters it is an application that helps you interface with your pattern use your pattern really easily and to keep track of where you are and I've had a few friends over the years friends who use knit companion regularly and they're always telling me how great it is and boys yeah yeah I'm a lifetime print pattern user I've used more printer ink and paper than anybody I know I started using it a few months ago and this is a game changer I'm loving this software and it's really easy to use and it I was trying to explain to someone it's it's really big software that has all kinds of features I'm really just still using the basics the just a little corner of the software not all the big customization features but I'm getting so much out of it and so in this video I'm going to show you the basics that I'm using all the time show you that it's really easy to use and a great way to interact with your patterns another way that you will enjoy this software is if you have more than one project going at once because you have your counters and a highlighter bar that shows you exactly where you are you can work on a pattern close that file open another file work on that pattern for a couple of weeks when you go back to the first one there is no mistaking where you are what row you're on where you are in the chart whatever else it's all right there it's really really handy anyway I'm excited to show you so let's take a look so Nick companion works with Android or Apple you can use it on anything that has a touchscreen I'm gonna go ahead and demonstrate here on my iPad you can use it on your phone your tablet whatever you want that has a touchscreen there's the companion app and here the first thing we see are some PDFs that I have in the software already this works seamlessly with your Ravelry library or if you use Dropbox you can also get files into the software that way right across here we see local which are the files that are in the software already Ravelry and dropbox I'm going to go ahead and open a file from my Ravelry library so I'll tap that and I've already logged into Ravelry so all my Ravelry patterns are in here I'm going to use the search bar to find what I'm looking for cabled here's the pattern this is one of my own patterns for cabled fingerless mitts so I tap that and then go to local the local files and I see that the patterns in there the file is in there so I'll tap that and here we are we have the pattern here in the software and the first big thing you see is start project this is all we need to do to get started on this next what I want to do is turn this landscape the software works either way landscape or or portrait I'm going to work on it landscape from here I'm going to start project and I need to enter a project name I'm going to call it mitts for mom and create the project and then once we actually have a project going it's not just a PDF file anymore things start to look a little bit different things open up we see everything that we have and just like any touchscreen software that you're using you're using your phone or whatever you can pinch in or out to zoom in or out which is a feature that I use all the time because some patterns are written so small I want to zoom way in to be able to see what's on there and the first couple of things we see here that I was kind of trying to avoid so I could show you zooming in and out is this blue bar and this yellow bar and this these are things that you can use to help you keep track of where you are and they're very very easy to slide around I'm going to zoom out a little bit you can see you can use this highlighter bar to show exactly where you are in the pattern you just highlight that row exactly where you are isn't that great this is one the things I'm using all the time and the blue bar I'm using the blue bar to show where I am if the patterns written in columns I always keep the blue bar to the right of the that I'm in whoops and I slide it if I'm working on this half I slide it to the center like that I don't use the blue bar as much as I used the highlighter the highlighter bar okay so we've got this project started we've got it rotated the way that we want it we've got the sliding row the next thing is the you are here marker there's no way you can lose track of where you are in your pattern with all of these features it is a little red dot that should be up here and you can move that you are here marker just by holding your finger down in the pattern and it will leave that little dot anywhere that you hold your finger down for a couple of seconds and no mistaking where you are in a pattern it's very handy okay as we rotate through all of this and look at all of these different things you'll see all these numbers along the side here these are our counters and there are six of them and it's very rare that you're going to need all six in a pattern but they're handy and they're there and there's lots of reasons why you might need more than one counter of course like this one might be your row counting this one might be your rows in a cable pattern this might be your sleeve decreases you know I've you know definitely had three or four going at once in a pattern before mostly you just need one and to advance the counter you just tap the number it's that easy to advance a counter and one thing I want to say before I go any more into the counters is it when you're working on a project especially multiple projects when you have all this open you have everything lined up just where you are with your counters just where you need to be when you shut the software down and open it back up everything is exactly where you left it the dog can't show up the pattern nobody clicked your row counter and everything is exactly where you left it so it's so easy to pick up where you were okay back to the counters if you hold your finger down on the counter you can jump back one in case you frog to row or reset the counter just hold your finger down to reset the counter to zero it's all very easy to use okay the next thing we'll see here is P 1 P 2 P 3 P 4 P 5 those are obviously the pages and it's just that easy to jump through the pages of the pattern and here on this chart you can see how handy the highlighter is when you're working on charts you can your eyes will jump exactly to the row that you're knitting with that how excuse me that highlighter bar okay navigating pages Oh something else I want to say about navigating pages is like on this page we have the abbreviations here and you know I might be here on the chart and the stitch comes up I can jump right over the abbreviations remember what that stitches jump back over it's it's so easy to navigate through all of this okay next I want to show you project notes and these buttons up here the this is show and hide the stuff at the top of the page so if i tap this button the pages disappear and reappear and this is show and hide the stuff at the bottom and we haven't done that yet so I'll go ahead and tap this to pull up the thing that comes up first is project notes and while I'm working on this pattern it's a MIT pattern I'm going to have to knit two so I'm going to take some notes about what I'm doing so I can make a second mitt to match so I'm going to say 14 rounds of cuff because maybe the pattern says knit two inches but I've got 14 rounds of cuff size small for Mom so I've got two notes that I need in here I know I'm knitting size small 14 rounds of cuffs so next time that I come back to this to knit the second one it's all there this button right here is just regular Apple stuff I can hide the keyboard that way and I can hide the notes at the bottom this way too and let's go back into these notes if you hit the project notes but in a second time we have a timer and this counts the amount of time that we have this project open in the software so next time someone asks you how long did it take you to knit that you can actually give them a real answer and not a guess we've been working on this one for five minutes now okay those are a bunch of the features in the free software I'm going to show you a couple of features in the paid version of the software and let me close that up the first one I want to show you is video links and this of course is near and dear to my heart because my patterns all have video links and you can add video links and watch them right in the software first thing I'm going to do is this button up here is the PDF button I'll tap that and I'll scroll down to some video links you tap a video link the software recognizes as a video link and it wants me to name the video I'm just going to call it part 1 and then add video link I'll go ahead and add a second one tap the video link it recognizes that it's a video and I'll say part two for this one add video link and I'm in the PDF version of this right now so I'm going to tap the little X up here to get back to my project and if I tap the show/hide stuff on the bottom first thing that comes up is my notes you've been there before second thing that comes up is my timer we've been there as well the third thing that comes up are the first video link that I saved and I can watch the video right here in the software my video tutorial and the second if I hit it again I'll get to the part two I keep if I keep tapping this I'll get through all of the video links that I put in I can watch them right here hide them when I don't need them to get back to the pattern isn't that great whoops I think I still have a video playing here I can hear my own voice so I know that I have a video playing here we go there we go okay now this that feature the video link feature is only available in the paid version and currently only for Apple only available in iOS this next thing I want to show you is also only available for Apple and iOS and is also in the paid version but this is something that I think is pretty cool it's called scribble and they're updating the software all the time so we'll see if this comes out for Android soon this little button right here if you tap that it pulls up a toolbar let me get this toolbar out here it pulls up a toolbar of pens and erasers and highlighters and colors and all kinds of stuff and I just slid it over to get it out of the way whoops just like I did in my project notes I said 14 rounds four cuff whoops I'm writing I didn't mean to I said fourteen rounds four cuff I can do the same thing here just by writing on the pattern and I'm gonna use a stylus because my handwriting is really bad whoops 14 rounds cuff and I also move that bar when I didn't mean to 14 rounds of cuff then when I go back to work the second mid I've got that right here this is exactly what I would do in a paper pattern right I would write on the pattern just like this and it's there until I want it gone I can also erase it using the scribble feature I don't have to have it there cuz my handwriting wasn't very good I can redo it if I want my handwriting doesn't get better just because I rewrote something there we go so here we are I'm back at the beginning of our pattern those are the basic tools that I'm using all the time in this software and really enjoying using it and switching between different patterns really easily all of my my places my count my marker everything is set this is the easy way if this is the easy way to use it the most basic features but there are a ton of features in here that I haven't even got to but if you want to completely customize your patterns there's features to tap to advance rows in charts there are voice commands there are all kinds of customizations that you can do and knit companion also works for crochet weaving beading and cross stitch patterns of course it does anything that comes in a PDF you can open in companion for following your pattern and that's it I hope you enjoyed this tour through the basics of knit companion good luck you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: VeryPink Knits

Views: 85,601

Rating: 4.9596772 out of 5

Keywords: knit, knitting, verypink, verypinkknits, verypink knits, very pink

Id: cWJkr4vieJs

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 20 2019