[_caw]

I've been plugging away on MadHatter (https://madhatter.app), a web tool for knitting/crochet projects. It works best on desktop!

Why? Many yarncrafters painstakingly build spreadsheets, or try to bend existing general purpose pixel editors to their will. It's time consuming & frustrating.

Along the way, I've solved a bunch of problems:

  - Automatic decreases (shapes the hat) / overstitching markers (shows when multiple colors are used in the same row)
  - Parameterized designs, like waves, trees, geometric shapes. No more manually moving an object by a couple of pixels, it's a simple click & drag.
  - Color palette merging (can't delete a color if you already use it in a pattern!)
  - Export to PDF (so you can print it or stick it on a tablet)
  - Repeat previews (visualize the pattern as it repeats horizontally)

The core feature that makes this more useful than most general purpose editors is that the canvas is continuous.

If you drag a shape near the right edge of the canvas, you'll see it "wrapping around" onto the right edge.

This reflects the 3D reality of a hat!

[mchaver]

I took a look at it because you do PDF generation (I am doing front-end PDF generation in my project as well so I wanted to compare), not because I know anything about knitting or crocheting. I made a design, drew on the grid a bit, but was unable to export. I am not sure if I was missing something but it would be helpful to the user if there was a message in the export area about why they cannot export yet.

[_caw]

Hey, sorry about that! I have a half-hearted "premium" feature tier of which PDF is one.

I just deleted that particular if-statement so you should be able to export.

It's not anything fancy, but gets the job done. Uses pdf-lib.

[mchaver]

No worries. I enjoy debugging UIs and giving a few pointers. PDF generation works now. The "Enter Zen Mode (upgrade plan)" button is unreadable (white text on grey background) and if I click the button it says "Your form submission has been received.".