There is an interesting interview today on the Brooklyn Tweed blog with Leila Raabe on her latest design for Wool People 6. I particularly enjoyed the discussion on how she uses Illustrator to create chart mockups during her design process. I’m currently working on a cabled design of my own, and have found that charting the pattern out before knitting it up has been really helpful in visualizing the finished piece. By using charts in my design process I’ve been able to play around with the design by moving different cables around within the overall layout and my idea has morphed into an even better design in the process.
Do you like knitting from charts? Though they seemed intimidating at first, I feel like my understanding of knitting took a huge leap forward once I learned how to read charts. If you don’t know how, I would urge you to take the time to learn. Links to a few good tutorials are below.
Love Is All You Knit 
Hate it, hate it, hate it. If a pattern doesn’t have written instructions, I pass.