I have a love-hate relationship with DAK. I bought it early in the professional version, upgraded it along the way, bought the lace tool, bought the CD, and even set up an old desktop with a serial port at one point just for DAK. I think DAK users already know why the "hate" part - despite my very careful and very "legal" (spirit of the agreement, not just the letter) use of DAK, I have to run it from the disk because of the oddball copy protection problems. It would be SO nice to simply run it from the hard drive. I also had to buy the CD when the floppies went bad, and they charged me $50, or something like that, on top of all the other money I'd paid. The cables are expensive, too...I had two cables and will soon own three.
The "love" thing about DAK is it communicates with my knitting machine, and for someone like me, since I am utterly compelled to knit the visions in my head and not just follow other people's patterns, DAK is a godsend. I used to spend hours with graph paper and a card punch, but now, I doodle in DAK and create all my stitch patterns. I also create shape files to knit for people, in addition to using the Knitleader. I even used to "knit from screen" for years, because it was a great way to cope with knitting with kids in the house. The kids would interrupt me, but DAK would keep my place. It is an awesome program. Fabulous. I'm even rather sympathetic about the copy protection issues, now that I'm designing and selling knitting patterns and wanting to protect my own intellectual property.
Yup, I have a Brother disk drive, and a PPD. DAK is better for me.
Another thing I love about DAK is how helpful it is when I don't get it right the first time. Trust me, with lace, I almost never get it right the first time! Most of my lace is done by placing the dots, as opposed to using the DAK lace tool, because I do peculiar things like partial knit-shaped doilies. There are usually mistakes in my charts. I just hop up as I am knitting and noticing what's wrong, fix it in DAK, download the pattern again, and try again.
DAK wouldn't download my lace edgings to the 965i last week, and I thought it was the cable. After borrowing a friend's cable, we finally realized it was the laptop I've been using the last 5 years. Thank goodness it wasn't the 965i! I've moved back onto that ancient DAK computer, which hadn't been turned on for about 4 years, after John did quite a bit of computer maintenance, and I'm back in business. Hooray! I've even realized what I liked about that old computer. It is too old and slow for the family to bother it; it has a trackball to make drawing all those dots easier; and it's in a very quiet corner but in cable reach of the machine. He'll fix the serial port on the good old laptop, hopefully, and I'll be able to doodle stitch patterns again while "watching" TV. I'll also be able to carry the laptop to the other machines.
Diana, I know you have a very busy life.I hope that you won't mind my asking for a video that shows how to sew in the set in sleeves. It has been some time since I have made them & am teaching my DIL to MK. So far she has knitted several cute outfits for my g'son that is due in June. I have been having her watch your videos as she learns new tech. They are a big help to her. I am not as good a teacher as you are!! She is doing very well. Thx
ReplyDeleteI'll add it to the list of videos to do. I'm not working on videos as much right now because I'm getting ready for the seminar - plus, it's my busy time at work.
ReplyDeleteBut what a great idea! I have several seaming videos I'd like to do now - slip crochet using the machine; short rowing a sleeve cap into the armhole, and this one.
Hi Diana, I have your GB course & just love it. I know that some of the newer knitters don't have GB's. While tooling around the web I discovered this site & am very excited about it. She is selling newly made GBs. They don't come with a needle stopper, but are certainly worth the money. I am trying to get the word out to all the newer knitters that have been unable to find GBs for their machine. Here is her url. http://www.kriskrafter.com/ I know that sometimes you put links up to worthy sites(that's how I learned about the new ribber comb wires). Thought this would be a good link for you to have. I'm sure the owner of the site would be more than happy to have her link up with yur GB lessons page. Hugs Sheryl
ReplyDeleteGuess what? I have one of Kris' new garter bars sitting right here! I'm going to try it, review it, and make a video of it!
ReplyDeleteIt's so great that these are available now. Here I am pushing garter bars as an essential item, and finally there are reasonable cost ones available.
I just bought a kh270 and have the option of adding a PPD for a reasonable price. I know that I will want to make some designs of my own (have defunk kh910), but is the PPD the best choice?
ReplyDeleteI think I'll take this question and write a little essay on it for today's blog post. 11-11-11
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