How to Make Knitting Charts

I've been putting this off for years people, years but it's time for me to teach myself how to make a damn chart.  I read them, I use them but I don't write them.  They are very intimidating to me for some reason.  I get all scared and just write the pattern instead.  Well not anymore. I am going to conquer this the once and for all.

I spent the better part of yesterday watching YouTube and all the wonderful tutorials on how to create knitting charts using excel.  They were simple and straight forward for the most part.  I started the day optimistic and feeling better about the whole thing.  I managed to make a chart with the right amount of rows and columns, make them all the right size and number each row.  Easy peasy right?  Great, now comes the hard part, filling in the knitting symbols.  The video just went to fonts scrolled down to knitting symbols font and started typing away.  So I paused the video, went to fonts, scrolled down to look for knitting symbols and it's not there.  Not there? That's where EVERYTHING went wrong.

My next stop, of course, was Google, where I searched for knitting fonts.  Google quickly returned a couple of results but only one free font was active. (Knitter's Symbols Fonts by David Xenakis) and it wasn't the one that I needed.  I took a look and downloaded it anyway maybe I could make it work.  Phew problem solved ahhhh nope.  You see I need symbols for cables and the ones included in this font list were not the ones that I needed.  By this point I'm totally frustrated.  I could have had the damn chart done already if I didn't have to search and search for the knitting fonts that I needed.  I took a 10 minute break.

Back to Google where I did find Stitchmastery.com and it looked good and had great reviews but it's £60 which is about $110 in the US.  Sorry don't have the funds to spend on this right now.  Back to square one.  I look at the clock and 5 hours has gone by.  5 hours wasted as far as I concerned.  I have nearly given up at this point and back to Google.   

This is where I found the Knitting Chart Maker app in iTunes.  Where have you been all day, where????  Grabbed my iPad and downloaded the free version.  OMG they have the cable symbols that I need.  It's a miracle and I have renewed my faith.  It's easy to use and it's only $4.
  Happy Dance

Now that I've had a good nights rest Im ready to conquer my chart knitting fear.  Wish me luck because I'm going to need it.  Big time.

Knit on my friends...knit on and conquer!