I am so excited . The college blanket was done in time for the big move-in date. And my daughter was thrilled.

I used Lion Brand Chunky Wool-Ease to make this blanket – and Martin Storey’s wonderful pattern (click here.  The blanket is soft, not itchy and machine washable – really important for whatever gets spilled on it in the dorm. Today, my daughter called, and it’s being used as a hug on a day she isn’t feeling well.

Towards the end of the project, I decided to include a square with the school logo knit in (the U).  My daughter and I decided that we preferred to define the logo with different stitches, rather than color.  I used a seed stitch for the orange side, and reverse stockinette for the green.

I tried different methods to create the logo.  First, I searched for an image of the school  logo online.

The next question was how to get the logo I’d found onto a chart.

I decided to use some of the free resources online.
The first product I tried was KnitPro 2.0 from MicroRevolt.org.

This program is simple to use.

You begin by selecting a grid size: Regular (48w x 64h), Big (96w x120h ) or XL (120w x 160h).

Next, choose what shape of stitch to map your picture onto.   This is very important since knitting stitches are rectangular rather than square.   If you pick square stitches, your motif will be distorted.

Then, pick a file from your computer and import – and your image is put onto the grid.

It is straight forward and easy to use, but it has limitations
1. Your picture has to be the right size before you start. Although this is true whether you use a program like this – or chart the old fashioned way, I was wishing that I could drag and drop my picture around on the grid, grab corners and re-size. Wishful thinking.
2. The grid is not to gauge, and there is no way to adjust this.   This is a biggy.
3. You can’t recolor, or erase colors on your grid. You’ll have to do any cleanup on the image after you print.

But, all things considered, this is a great program – especially for free.  You can get it here. http://www.microrevolt.org/knitPro/ They rely on donations, and any and all are appreciated.

I also tried KPG Knitting Pattern Generator http://kpg.sourceforge.net/ which looks amazing from the description. However,  while I was able to successfully download the program, but could not figure out how to install it.  When I tried to open it, it was in a file format, tgz,  that I wasn’t familiar with.

The program that I didn’t try, is Knitting Software’s, Stitch and Motif Maker. It looks wonderful, but at $89.95, I decided to wait until knewI’d be designing more motifs.

In the end, I made my motif the old fashioned way. I printed out Actual Size Graph Paper (I love this product) http://www.tata-tatao.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html, put it over my image, taped it to the window, and drew dots by hand where the patterns was supposed to go. It was tedious, but it worked.

And how did the motif come out?   I like it, and my daughter loves having her school on her blanket – subtle, but there.

Lessons learned

1. The motif would have worked better on a reverse stockinette ground – next time, I’ll probably frame it up

2. Because of the limitations, charting it the old fashioned way worked best for me.

3. The people who design for a living are my heroes.   They’ve done all the hard stuff, letting me just knit.