The past few days I've been playing around with graph paper. I know, that sounds like SO much fun, right? Actually, yes! I'm working on some free fair isle Christmas stocking patterns I'll be releasing. I'll be posting some how-to-work-fair-isle videos to go along with those patterns on my youtube channel. It's gonna be awesome people!
Anyway, in order to put the design I created into a PDF for Ravelry, I needed to digitalize my pencil-and-paper chart. Here's how I created my fair isle chart using Microsoft Excel 2010 on my PC:
The very first thing you'll need to do when you open excel is alter the cells so that they're a bit more square-ish. They're fairly long rectangles by default and that won't work for us today. So, click on the triangle in the corner (indicated by the red arrow above) to select all the cells, then drag the cells to 3.00 (or 26 pixels). (To drag, hover your mouse in between the "A" and "B" and a little toggle will appear. Click and hold to drag!)
Now that your cells are the size of stitches, you can begin filling them in to create your design. To do this, right click on any cell, and click the paint bucket. You can click the tiny little triangle next to the paint bucket to change the default color.
While you're in the process of designing, you can use the slider (down in the right corner) to zoom out and see how it's lookin'. :)
Once you're all done, you'll need to add some black grid lines so your chart is easy for people to read. To do this, you'll need to select your entire design by clicking the top left corner and dragging it all the way down to the bottom right.
Once you have your design selected, click the little square in the task bar, then select "All Borders." Boom! Chart made! Now, in order to save it as a picture file, you'll need to select it all again (click and drag from corner to corner) and then copy it (by right clicking and selecting copy).
How awesome is that?! Creating these charts is my new obsession.
I'll talk with you guys again Friday!
Until then,
Grace
