I am continuing to sort out issues that might help make lace shawls, scarves, and garments that require a finite length of time in their actual knitting. Punchcard machines are friendlier than electronic ones in terms of picking up the pattern after interruptions, and visual cues when correcting mistakes are easier to track and see. I design knits in a way similar to the way I cook. With several sources and ideas in front of me, I pick, choose, and “go for it.”
My most recent blank punchcard purchase revealed that Taitexma (Brother clone company) is now producing pre-numbered cards for machines printed in RED! Does not affect function, but is distracting to me visually. In the past, it used to be the color red vs blue card blanks was another distinguishing factor between machine companies. Studio traditionally red, Brother blue (with pre-punched lace cards being their exception).
The cost of cards has increased, and punching lace repeats at least for me is prone to errors. In a previous post, I discussed my way of marking up cards to make the process easier. Now, however, I was searching for a way of working out repeats on something equal in size to the punchcards that would allow for tracing holes, shifting pattern centers, be easily edited, and provide a size-specific visual template when the final design is reached, thus avoiding lots of taped over holes and mistakes on the actual punchcards. This brought me back to the drawing board, literally.
I have created a word document that prints to scale on my printer, converting it to PDF changed the aspect ratio, so I am sharing it in older.doc word format in case others may find it useful. The center “picture” is 7.15 inches long, by 4.31 in width, can easily be tweaked if needed for the individual printer: numbered card
While drafting a new post revisiting graph papers and more on 4/21/18 I created a new document, save as pdf, that presently prints to scale for me scale card extra2