Knitting/Crocheting without patterns...............

[BadgerBadger]

I love knitting and kitting out my DD's, and friends children with funky hats/scarves/blankets during winter . I've just started to crochet too.

I can't follow numbered patterns though (I have dyscalculia), so I can't cross stitch/knit/crochet by anything other than sight and imagination. Does anyone have any similar problem? Or can anyone think of a way to get around this?

I have to restart each piece about twenty times to gauge the right size, which is a bit time consuming!

Have you seen Intarsia patterns? They have a square for each stitch with a different symbol in each square for the colour/whether it should be knit/pearl etc. they might give you some good ideas for patterns.

I'm sorry I don't know enough about your condition to know whether this would be any use. What about a funny thing that slides on the end of the needle and you turn it round each time you do a row, although sometimes I forget to do this, or how about filling in squares on squared paper to match a set that someone else has already filled in for you?
I often knit things from sight, basing the size on something I've previously completed or just holding it up against the person a lot! My exdh was only 5'2" so I used to have to alter patterns for him quite a bit!

I asked my mum about this today - she is big on knitting, unlike me in spite of others on here trying to persuade me (let me get some other stuff out of the way first, ladies!).

Anyway, she couldn't think of anything. If you keep bumping this, the fab mumsnetter knitters might be able to help.

how about the symbolic notation - like japanese notation for patterns - with it set out in a diagram - would that still have too many numbers>

Yes, the only thing I can think of is charted patterns. Lace and stuff is often written like that. If you had a whole sweater, for example, drawn out on graph paper, and you ticked off each row as you did it, would that help? You'd still have to count the squares though, so I'm not sure it would. I'd gladly try to "translate" a pattern for you if that would help? If not, I could ask on one of the knitting lists I'm on and see if anyone else has any ideas. It must be so frustrating.

Ah go on SueW, you know you want to

this is the sort of thing I mean:-
see link to pattern:-

grannys-garret.com/symbol_crochet/symbol_crochet.html