Placing stitches
You build a knit chart by choosing a stitch and painting it onto the cells of the grid. This page covers the three tools, the stitch types, coloring, and working with a selection of cells.
The three tools
Section titled “The three tools”The tool buttons in the toolbar set what a click or drag on the chart does:
- Place (the pen) — paints the current stitch onto the cells you click or drag across. Hovering shows a preview of the stitch before you commit.
- Select — selects cells. Click one cell, drag to select a rectangle, or Shift-click to extend the selection from the last cell you clicked.
- Erase — clears the cells you click or drag across back to blank.
Each press-drag-release is a single step, so Undo takes back a whole stroke at once.
Choosing a stitch
Section titled “Choosing a stitch”There are two ways to choose the stitch you paint with:
- The stitch picker — the first button after Undo/Redo in the toolbar (tooltip Choose Stitch). It opens a grid of stitch symbols. A new chart starts with Purl selected.
- The pie menu — hold S with the pointer over the chart, move toward a slice, and release to choose it. The Slip… and Through back loop… slices open a second ring of related stitches. Press Esc or right-click to close the menu without choosing.
The pie menu is also the way to choose plain Knit (a bare cell with no symbol) and Empty (a blank cell).
Stitch types
Section titled “Stitch types”| Stitch | Symbol |
|---|---|
| Knit | No symbol — a plain cell |
| Purl | A filled dot |
| Knit (bar) | A short vertical bar |
| Purl (bar) | A short horizontal bar |
| Slip | A V |
| Slip wyif | A V with a dot at the top |
| Slip wyif (cross) | A V with a line through the middle |
| Slip wyif (filled) | A V with a line at the bottom |
| Slip wyif (filled bar) | A V with lines at the middle and bottom |
| Knit tbl | A crossed loop |
| Purl tbl | A loop with a dot |
| Purl tbl (bar) | A loop with a bar above it |
| Knit tbl (arrow) | A vertical line with a slash |
| Purl tbl (arc) | A horizontal line with a slash |
Empty marks a cell that is part of the fabric but has no stitch assigned yet. It looks like a lightly shaded blank cell, which is subtly different from a plain Knit cell.
Stitch colors
Section titled “Stitch colors”The Stitch color swatch next to the stitch picker sets the color of the stitches you place. Select it to open the color picker:
- Standard — ten fixed colors.
- Custom — ten slots for your own colors. Right-click a custom slot to edit it with a hue slider, a saturation-and-value area, and a hex field. Your custom colors are saved on this device.
Choose a color, then paint as usual. Every stitch type except Knit and Empty can carry a color; placing a Knit or Empty cell removes the color from that cell.
To recolor stitches you have already placed, either paint over them again, or select them and use Fill with current color from the right-click menu (below).
Working with a selection
Section titled “Working with a selection”With the Select tool active, select a block of cells and right-click it. The menu shows the size and position of the selection, what is on the clipboard, and these commands:
- Copy the pattern — copy the selected stitches and their colors.
- Paste the pattern — paste what you copied, starting at the top-left cell of the selection.
- Fill with current stitch — change every selected cell to the current stitch, keeping each cell’s color.
- Fill with current color — recolor every selected stitch that can carry a color.
- Clear cells in selection — reset the selected cells to blank.
- Insert a row above or below, or a column to the left or right of the selection.
The keyboard works too: Cmd/Ctrl + C copies the selection, and Cmd/Ctrl + V pastes at the selected cell. If a paste runs past the edge of the chart, the chart grows downward and to the right to make room. Copied stitches go on your computer’s clipboard as text, so you can also paste them into another chart.
Undo and redo
Section titled “Undo and redo”Use the Undo and Redo buttons at the left of the toolbar, or Cmd/Ctrl + Z and Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Z. Every paint stroke, fill, paste, and row or column change can be undone.