I started writing a native Android application with Jetpack Compose at the beginning of this year. I have been working on it in my free time and it solves a problem I have been having since I started knitting: Swatch Management.
What is a Swatch?
A swatch is a small piece of fabric that you knit with the yarn and needles in the pattern you intend to knit your finished piece with. You treat your knitted swatch just as you will treat the finished piece (wash it, dry it) and then you take measurements that will give you the following information: How many stitches and rows do I knit per my reference length (usually 10 cm is good enough) and the result is then called your gauge. Gauges vary a lot, from knitter to knitter but also depending on needle size and knitting pattern and style (i.e. knitting in the round versus knitting flat).
Why do you need an app for that
Knitting swatches is dull! I want to start with the fun part. So I have often bought a yarn I have knitted with before, because that meant that I knew the gauge. So for every swatch I had to knit I stored the information that was important in a Nextcloud Notes file and on Ravelry. On Ravelry I had to misuse the notes section to add all the information I needed. For example I usually knit 2 swatches for sweaters that have colorwork in it, because my tension is way different when I knit with 2 strands vs when I knit with 1, so I need to account for that in stitch count when I knit the final sweater. I also want to save the measurements I take before I calculate the actual gauge, I often measure at 3 different places on the swatch and average over those measurements. I wanted to develop an app just because I think that that’s fun.
Why am I writing this?
Marvin and my colleagues reminded me that I should not wait to publish my code until I am satisfied with everything. I need to feel at least a little ashamed. So I published the code on Codeberg! The pipeline still runs in the private GitLab instance I have been using, I will see if I can move that to Codeberg as well. I plan to publish the app in F-Droid as a next step. And I think I will write a few lines on the technical stuff in another blogpost.