#cable row

[saxofficial]

The Most Underrated Exercise To Build a Wide Back

You’re missing out on building a strong back if you haven’t tried this back exercise yet 🔥

Try it and let us know how much you would rate it out of 10 👇

You can also get your workouts in the Gymaholic Fitness App:

https://www.gymaholic.co/app

[solarisce]

[icantalk710]

"Let me go to a gym along a different route home this time, what's the worst that could happen"

Commute back: "hold my beer"

[foldingfittedsheets]

Due to new med shenanigans the Stupid Pills I’m taking I am just real fucked up and tired. I want to play video games but the only titles that spark joy are on legacy consoles that I don’t have the energy to set up.

I sitting on the couch eyeing Sly Cooper and knowing that it definitely ain’t happening.

[dhwty-writes]

The best thing about knitting is that it's repetitive and you can do other things at the same time. The worst thing about knitting is that it's repetitive and you can't do the right things at the same time.

[the-ninth-opossum]

row 42/84:

we are halfway through!! and that was the easy half!!!!! the horrors await!!!!! i am incredibly pleased with how it has turned out so far though so we will keep at it...

[amalieknits]

Very grateful for summer holidays and for my insane sock knitting tendencies rn because:

I had to unravel a sock that I test knit, but before doing that I knit an entire different sock as like, idk, a palate cleanser? A break? Idk I found it very relaxing, at least. And because I spent a day and a half knitting a different sock, I wasn't even upset about literally unraveling an entire sock that I actually spent quite a lot of time on (because new pattern + colour work). Instead I just feel excited about the prospect of all these socks that I'm sure I'm gonna love.

[mariana-oconnor]

How do you design your patterns for knitting?? They are so pretty! 😍

In Excel (or the spreadsheet program of your choice*). First I set the ratio of the cells so each cell is one stitch. Double knitting, like for the blanket is a 2:3 ratio, roughly, which means that every two stitches across is about the same length as three stitches upwards. So I set the width of each column to 0.3 cm and the height of each cell to 0.2 cm. (For contrast, standard colourwork is usually closer to a 4:5 ratio, so don't use double knitting diagrams for single knitting or vice versa)

(Weirdly, in Excel you only seem to be able to adjust in centimetres if you put the spreadsheet in print view first, so it looks like different pages, idk why. Excel sucks like that I guess.)

*Not Google Sheets, because last time I checked it doesn't allow background images. This may have changed since.

Then I put a thick black border around the limits of my pattern. For the baby blankets it's about 176 columns by 264 rows, though the width is subject to change a little based on the pattern (if I decide on a repeating border it has to be divisible by the right number), and if I change that, I might adjust the length as well because I want the blankets to be roughly square.

Once that's done, I decide on a theme and a rough idea of what I want it to look like. For my most recent blanket I knew I wanted mountains because my friends like to hike. I knew I wanted space because one of them is really into space stuff. And I knew I wanted chickens because the other has chickens that she loves.

When I know roughly what elements I want to include, I do an image search for silhouettes of that thing. This is one of the reasons I haven't made any of the patterns available, because copyright. I do transform the images I find, and some of the elements (borders, patterns) are entirely from my own mind, but there's a lot that's based off images I find. I don't specifically go searching for creative commons images because it's personal use and the only place I even show pictures of them is here on Tumblr. Like I said, I transform them, and it's personal use, so I'm pretty sure I'm clear just making my blankets for my friends, but any further might be questionable. Idk. Copyright is a thorny sort of a thing.

ANYWAY. I get a silhouette image (silhouettes because they're clearer, although one of the chickens on the latest blanket is from a photograph, but that's trickier to work with). Then I set it as the background of my Excel spreadsheet.

One interesting thing about Excel is that the zooming in and out doesn't affect the background image like it does the cells, so I zoom in or out until the image is about the size I want in relation to the size of the whole blanket. Then I colour in the cells on top of it. At first it's just the cells that are completely filled in in the image below, then it's the ones that are half filled in or more.

Once that's done, I remove the background image and I fuck around with what's left (essentially a pixel art version of the silhouette). This is the stage that takes a lot of time, because there's often a lot of tweaking to do to make it look good. Fine lines and curves are difficult, and sometimes things just need to be changed. For instance, the owl on my most recent blanket started out life as a long-eared owl and I changed it into a barn owl because that suited my aesthetic more. The mouse I adjusted the size of multiple times and the shape of the back and the ears and the nose... and the tail... to make it fit the space I wanted it in and also to make it look more mouse-like. Literally changing one cell can make a huge difference to how something looks, it's crazy.

For borders and decorative bits, I tend to just mess around with colouring in the cells in swirly patterns until I come up with a shape I like. Repeating patterns are a lot easier to do, but do require you to do maths to make sure they fit properly. This probably requires patience, but I find it strangely addictive and zen-like.

For the ivy on my last one, I used silhouettes for the leaves, then used the transform tools in excel to mirror the five or six different leaf silhouettes I had vertically and horizontally, then moved them around and connected them with twisting lines to create the impression of vines.

Once I've got all the separate pieces, I copy them all into the outline I have of the blanket and move them around (it's important to keep the originals separate, because when you move things in excel you can often copy over something and chop off an ear or a tail or half a bird).

But yeah, then I move stuff around until the layout works for me. Sometimes at this point I have to resize things, which is annoying.

Then, when I've got things roughly in place, I mess around with them some more until they look right. It's a lot of trial and error at this stage

For example, in the dragon and unicorn blanket I did, the dragon's tail was messed around with a lot at this point. I had it curling one way, then the other way. I made it really long. I made it really short. I had it end with spikes. I had it end with the spade.

As a final touch, I then add the more random details that don't need as much work, like the stars or the snowflakes, which are fairly easy to just design on the spot. I move those around as well, until I'm happy with them.

Then I start knitting.

The design does often evolve as I'm knitting. For instance, after seeing how the tension worked on the mouse in my most recent blanket, I realised that the planet was going to be stretched thin the way I had initially designed it, so I tweaked it to be fatter so it would appear more round in the finished product. Similarly I added some more leaves to the tree and moved the top branch down a bit for better framing.

That got kind of long, but I hope it helps.

[chaos-lioness]

Wow that Judy’s Magic Cast On sure can magic!!! This is the tidiest most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

[l00k4tm4m45c415]

LeanBeefPatty

[journeyman-tier-fibercraft]

The Swatchening has begun. It's funny that you can visibly see me getting better at knitting cables from the first cable swatch I knit (top left) to the one I just finished this morning (bottom right).

This acrylic yarn isn't the best for really dramatic cables like the top left one (the Nautical Twisted-Rope Cable from "A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns" by Barbara G. Walker, pg. 181) but looks quite good in the bottom right pattern (Telescope Lattice from the same book, pg. 201).

What's really interesting is the difference in gauge of these swatches. The Nautical Twisted-Rope Cable is 49 stitches but about as wide as the stockinette swatch directly below it which is only 30 stitches wide. The actual gauge for the Nautical Twisted-Rope Cable is about 7 stitches to an inch, the stockinette and double seed stitch cables are 5 stitches to an inch, and the Telescope Lattice is closer to 6 stitches to an inch. Note that these are all unblocked gauges but I don't expect this acrylic yarn to change significantly unless I heat block it which I cannot do right now.

I think I'm going to swatch the main front cable/ribbing together and if that goes well, I'll knit a whole front panel of the cardigan using 6st/inch stitch count. I should also come up with a plan for the sleeves... That's a problem for future me.

[imaginealpha]

Tech product guides trying to troubleshoot your issues: lol have you tried turning it off and turning it on again 🧐 I'm not going to read any of the things you said you did, if it doesn't work then get fucked. Go to settings and click this option that you said isn't even there anymore

Reddit: here's some actual helpful suggestions on where to find settings that can fix your problem. We're more reliable than google search. Except for when we just tell you to buy new hardware instead of trying to fix your problem

Some obscure tech blog article from 7 years ago: i *google ad* gotchu *google ad* *google ad* *troubleshooter you never knew existed* *google ad* *solution to your problem*

[aendromedal]

god i am so happy i'm training core tomorrow

[marnz]

okay changed my mind I love this lace yarn (silk/mohair). Soft and airy yet gives a nice sense of structure to superwash merino, catches the light, is 600 yards per skein.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

the real knitting tragedy is when the best/most intricate sweater you've ever made was made with yarn that turns out to pill rather quickly 😩