Unmastering the Cable Knit Hat

A couple years ago, I tried to make this free cable knit hat pattern from Michael's using I Love This Chunky Yarn from the craft store that I don't shop from anymore (don't even want to link to them!).

They look decent enough right? Except it was just too tight. I tried wearing it once to a ski resort (while not skiing of course, always use a helmet while skiing!) to convince myself that it was okay and would loosen up, but it kept popping off my head because it was too tight. We ended up donating them, because it would probably fit kids with smaller heads fine.

For the next version made with Lion Brand Hometown Yarn in Lake Tahoe Blue, I tried to make a loose slouchy cable hat, so I added an extra cable which is 8 stitches. And I made it extra tall.

This took nearly two skeins and ended up being really heavy. Sure you can put it on your head for the cool slouchy look, but it just falls off immediately after the photo shoot.

If you put in on top of your head so it doesn't fall off the back, it fits too loosely and just falls over your face.

Clearly, this cable hat doesn't work either. I completely frogged the hat (didn't want to donate this disaster), and started again. This time I used the Aspen Hat crochet pattern from 5 Little Monsters. It worked perfectly.

I was even able to reuse the pom pom.

So the key to making a chunky cable knit hat is not to make a chunky cable knit hat, you will never get the right number of cable stitches to work!

It's that time of the year for heart-shaped decorations! Here's a heart-shaped wreath covered in crochet flowers made from any scrap yarn with red, pink or purple hues.

Really, I only used scrap yarn for this project! Way too much pink and red yarn in this house... The only thing I purchased was some floral wire that I shaped into a heart by twisting it together, overlapping it 3 times.


Darice Floral Paper Wrap Wire Brown 8 Yards

For the flowers, I used a variety of free patterns from my fellow crochet artists. The largest flower in the center is Lisa's Rose Crochet Flower Pattern.

Another interesting pattern is Mikey's Crochet Bee Happy Flowers. This is reminiscent of the Crazy Exponential Necklace as it simply triples from row to row. I couldn't make it to the fourth row, but three is plenty. Up close, this flower looks like brain folds!

The majority of the flower uses Lantern吧. It's quick and easy to make.

Attaching the flowers to the wireframe is a little tricky. The first time I tried to assemble them, the flowers would flop to the side and wouldn't stay in the front. I found a technique that worked to keep the flowers steady.

Using a yarn needle, thread one end between the wires so that the flower faces forward. This may be one or two wires depending on where the flower falls on the wire twist. The flower below is threaded under one wire.

Thread one end in between wires on the front side

Tie the flower on the backside of the wireframe. The flower below, shown from the backside, is threaded under two wires. Arrange all the flowers with ties until you are happy with the spacing.

Once all the flowers are positioned, untie each flower and knot it in place. Then wrap one end around all three wires and knot it again. Trim the excess ends. This is how it will look from the backside.

Hang and enjoy! Happy Valentine's Day!

Half Page Turns for Digital Sheet Music

四六级：用翻译提升全科能力，come on!_北方号_北方热点:2021-3-3 · 原标题：四六级：用翻译提升全科能力，comeon!作者：新东方考研四六级大家晚上好呀～我是新东方小小明四六级分数已经出来10余天了几家欢喜几家愁下一阶段的四六级考试也要准备起来啦虽然延迟了考试，但是，早考晚考都要考那就先把最难的攻克下来吧四六级什么最难？

In 2012, we watched Christopher O'Riley perform on From the Top with a laptop folded back on the piano. This was before tablets were widely used, and certainly before the full-size iPad Pro came out.

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From the Top Photo by Neale Eckstein, 2017

Shortly afterward, Mr. O'Reilly switched to an iPad as seen here with Ifetayo Ali-Landing in 2017. Being a software geek through and through, I had to jump on the bandwagon. I didn't want to invest in an iPad Pro in case my efforts fell flat. I opted for a used (unfortunately discontinued) Samsung Galaxy Pro Tablet 12.2" and a Lantern吧. At around $350 total, this is a much smaller investment than an iPad Pro 13" at $1000 and top off the line Page Flip Firefly Bluetooth Page Turner Pedal at $110.

Cheapness does come with a price. I lost 0.8" on the diagonal screen dimension (12.2" vs 13"), but because of the aspect ratio, this becomes even more in the horizontal direction in portrait mode. The width of the page determines how large the sheet music appears on the screen. Full-size sheet music is 9"x12" which is the same 4:3 aspect ratio as the iPad, or 1.333. Even 8.5"x11" pages have a similar 1.29 ratio. By comparison, a 16:9 ratio is 1.778. Here's a little math to determine the difference in the width of the two screens.

So the width of my 16:9 12.2" tablet screen is 6" versus the iPad at 7.8". That's a huge difference in width! So how does 6" look against the same music on a 9x12" page?

Actually, not that bad since music apps crop the white space of the page. At first, I was bothered by the bluish hue of the white background but I finally found the sepia tone to be more like sheet music paper.

The first thing I realized about using digital sheet music is that you have to turn the pages twice as often as paper sheet music. Paper sheet music in books or binders always show two pages at a time. This is fine when the music is not very complex, but when you in a complicated passage near the page turn this can be quite stressful. If you stomp the pedal too many times or press both pedals at once, the on-screen keyboard may pop up by accident or worse the program crashes. This would be disastrous in a performance!

My initial app for sheet music was Orpheus, but then I moved to MobileSheets for this feature: half page turns! I watched a fellow chamber music pianists effortless play a piano trio with his iPad Pro and asked him how he became comfortable turning pages with the pedal. He showed me his nifty forScore app (iOS only at a pricey $14.99!!) and how he uses half-page turns. Wait - doesn't that mean you have to turn pages twice as often, or 4 times the number paper sheet music turns?

With half-page turns, you press the pedal somewhere in the bottom half of the page and half of the next page pops on top of the screen. Then you seamlessly play from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen without having to worry about pressing the pedal at exactly the right time. After you get to the next page at the top of the screen, you press the pedal again when it's convenient to fill down the rest of the page. So page turns are essentially decoupled from the actual playing and don't have to be timed perfectly right. Even though it's more presses, it's far less stressful.

But I didn't have an iPad Pro with the forScore app! With some searching, I found that the free version of MobileSheets also had half-page turns. It's a little tricky to enable, so here are the instructions (note the sepia tone which is easier on the eyes):

Tap and hold the screen to get the bottom toolbar.

Tap the page button (4th icon circled in green).

Under Display mode, select "Half Page". Also, you can set the Sepia tone lower on this settings page. Another setting I found invaluable was the page scaling mode (next button on the bottom toolbar). When you set to full screen, it stretches the page so that you don't get the letterbox wasted space you can see with the Orpheus screenshots at the beginning of this post.

Here is a half-page turn for a tricky passage in Beethoven's Archduke trio. You simply play from the bottom to the top of the page. In fact, this is a better way to learn the music through a paper page turn because you can see it all at once.

My first performance with digital sheet music was with Claude Bolling's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano. My sheet music copy was purchased back in 1980 and is completely falling apart. Every time I practiced, more pages would opt to leave the binding and the scotch tape everywhere was getting ridiculous. The performance was definitely a bit more stressful with the digital page-turning, but it wasn't disastrous.

Still, I feel more comfortable with paper sheet music for performances. I mostly use digital sheet music to try out pieces before I decide to print them. Maybe someday I'll become more comfortable with it, but in the end, I'm still an old-fashioned paper sheet music gal. Thank goodness I didn't plunk down the money for the iPad Pro (although I'm sure I could find other uses for one)!