How to use it
Knitting is never one number. Total rows climb while the row inside the pattern climbs, and every time the pattern comes round the repeat count climbs too. A tool with a single counter therefore sends you back to paper and pencil sooner or later. What this app does is move all of them from one press.
1. Getting started
Pick a shape on the first screen and a project is created. Three are ready: one number for a scarf or plain body, a pattern that repeats every few rows, and shaping every few rows. The repeat starts at eight rows and the shaping at every six, both changeable while you count.
The shape you pick is only a starting point. While counting you can add counters, rename them, change their rules, and remove the ones you no longer need. Removing a counter does clear the undo history, because once the number of counters changes the old undo positions no longer line up, and restoring wrong values is worse than losing the history.
Projects sit side by side. A winter scarf and a baby hat can be on the needles at once without their numbers mixing. Opening one from the list brings up only that project's counters.
Start counting2. Counting without looking
The bottom half of the screen is one plus button. Anywhere inside it adds one. Aiming at a small target with a needle in each hand is close to impossible, so we removed the need to aim. The back of a hand or a wrist works.
Each press gives a short sound. When a pattern comes round and the counter turns back to one, the sound is slightly longer and higher. That is the moment people counting by hand miss most often, so it is the only one we made different. Sound and buzz can each be switched off, and the setting stays in this browser.
Minus and undo sit in the narrow strip at the top. Use minus when a press landed twice, and undo when you want every counter that rose together to come back down exactly. Undo remembers forty steps, and that history is saved with the project, so it is still there days later.
Start counting3. Making one press move several counters
Counter settings hold two rules. The first is rising with another counter. Choose the counter to follow and how many of its steps make one of yours. For an eight row pattern, attach the repeat count to total rows and enter eight.
The second is turning back. Past the number you set, the counter returns to one. Set the row within the pattern to eight and it runs one to eight and starts again. Together the two rules mean total rows keep climbing, the row inside the pattern cycles through eight, and the repeat count rises once every eight rows, all from a single press.
Minus walks the same rules backwards. Take one off the total and whatever rose alongside it comes back down. A counter that turns back goes from one to its top number. Pairings where two counters would follow each other are refused, because they would loop forever.
4. Not losing your line
Paste the pattern text you are working from into the pattern box under the counters and the current line is shown large. Each line becomes one step and blank lines are skipped. Move with the previous and next buttons, or jump to the line whose number matches the current row.
The line does not follow the counter automatically. Pattern text often describes several rows in one line and mixes in prose, so guessing would put the wrong line on screen in large type. You decide when to move.
We do not host patterns. Published patterns are under copyright, and collecting them would make this a different kind of app. What you paste stays in this browser and never reaches our servers. Very long text fails quietly against browser storage limits, so only the beginning is kept and the screen says so.
5. Coming back days later
Every press is saved in this browser. Close the window, come back weeks later in the same browser at the same address, and the last number is still there. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to decide about saving.
It does go when browser storage is cleared or the device changes. That is what the export file is for. Import the downloaded file on another device and you carry on from the same numbers. Importing adds to what is already there rather than replacing it, because losing a project of several weeks to an overwrite is far worse than a duplicate.
Turn on keeping the screen awake and it stays lit while you are on the counting page. Some devices and browsers cannot do this at all, and there nothing happens beyond a single line of explanation. In that case raise the screen timeout in your device settings.
6. Where people get stuck
If pressing plus leaves another counter unchanged, it has no counter to follow. Open its settings, choose the counter it should follow, and check how many steps make one.
If a number keeps returning to one, a turning back value is set on it. A counter for total rows should be set to never turn back.
If another device shows nothing, that is expected. This app does not move a log between devices. Export a file and import it there.
Voice counting was left out on purpose
Your hands are busy, so counting out loud sounds ideal, and we considered it. The catch is that speech recognition in Chromium browsers sends the microphone audio to the browser vendor's servers to be understood. That runs straight into our promise that nothing you enter leaves the device, so we did not build it. Instead the plus button covers half the screen, large enough to press with the back of a hand or a wrist.