Amanda Knits

Duplicate stitching has come up on Knitters Review a couple times. Here are some ideas that may help.

For better coverage, split the plies, then turn a few plies upside down and put the plies back together side by side. Do not try to retwist the plies into yarn, just put them next to each other. This helps fill in the stitches. (Anyone familiar with cross-stitching or embroidery will probably be familiar with this idea.) You may even want to use some extra plies to help fill it in, or a slightly thicker yarn.

Another idea that can be used for duplicate stitching as well as making color charts, making cable charts, etc, it to use Excel. For stitching my name in Hangul for the Dobok Sweater, I fiddled with the cell sizing a bit, and used cell shading to mark the squares I wanted to chart out. This way I was sure that the letters would fit and were centered on my sweater. While Excel cells are not usually the exact same as knitting square ratios, it's certainly closer than using square graph paper, and you can save the chart and rework it as needed.

I changed the cell sizing and shading as follows. Your mileage may vary. I was using Microsoft Office Excel 2003.

Go to FORMAT. Then ROW, then HEIGHT. In this sample my height was 13.2.

Go to FORMAT. Then COLUMN, then WIDTH. In this sample my width was 5.44.

To change cell color, go to FORMAT, then CELLS, then PATTERNS. Click on the color you want to use.

If you want to add a border to help see each cell clearly, go to FORMAT, then CELLS, then BORDER. Choose the style you want and click INSIDE and OUTSIDE to get all cells bordered. (For the record, my chart had lines between each cell too, it's just that resizing the image made the shading funky looking.)

Go back to Excel and click where you want to fill in that color. Ta da. Chart done!