iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

This is already the most iterations I've done on a single knitting project, and I'm not 100% certain that I'm done. I was able to wear the hat to an event today, so success, but we'll see if inspiration and opportunity lead me to try again.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

I wanted to go for the "half ping pong balls floating in pistachio pudding" look, so I 3d-printed some half-spheres and sewed them to the top of the hat.

green knit hat with two 3d-printed half-sphere eyeballs sewn to the top

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

I experimented with traditional googly eyes, which looked kind of fun, but not what I wanted:

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

The nice thing about the knitting machine is that once you're underway, the difference between 150 rows and 180 rows is only a few minutes of cranking, so I ended up with a 180 row hat, which I now realize was too long for my purposes, so I went back to one of the lime green acrylic hats.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

So I proceeded to knit a new hat with Wool-Ease wool/acrylic yarn - my new favorite, it's soft, has a nice feel, works well in the machine.

180 row beanie knit on the Sentro Circular Knitting Machine in dark green Wool Ease yarn

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Also, it's acrylic, which is OK, but maybe I'd be happier with yarn that's a wool/acrylic blend, or just straight wool? A while back, I made this hat/scarf combo which is really soft and I love the colors:

green and blue variegated yarn used in a hat and scarf. The scarf also has black sections. I think the green/blue is wool yarn, and I don't know what the black is.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Ok, but not great - I was finding the yarn to be a little too "tight" on the machine, I just wasn't happy. I took some time to take the machine apart, clean and lube it, reassemble it, try again - I kind of think maybe I don't like that yarn.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

I made a 150-row hat, and it seemed OK

150 row beanie hat, knit on my sentro circular knitting machine. I used Red Heart Super Saver yarn, which is economical, but wasn't giving me good results on the machine.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

I wanted to make my own frog-hat for my own purposes. Around that time, my #Sentro #knittingmachine had been gathering dust for most of the summer months, and I had forgotten the muscle memory of cranking out (no, literally) hats on the device. I made a 120-row hat, and realized it was too short.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

A thread (ha!) about a knitting project. Back in October, I saw some people wearing hats that I clocked as frog-hats, green, with white discs on top with black spots in the center. Roughly similar to mickey mouse ear hats, but a different color scheme.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The water is a "flow field" that traces paths through a vector field generated using noise. I clip the paths to the bounding boxes of cells - I should have clipped against the actual cell boundaries, but I got lazy.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I made the cells using Bridson Blue Noise to generate cell centers, then generated Voronoi regions. The map images (mountains, cabins, snowman) were all hand-drawn SVGs that were imported and 50% of the time flipped left/right

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

For what it's worth: I decided to make a map, like from an old Tabletop Role Playing Game, of a snowy mountain valley - around the edges, you will see mountains, closer in, hills, some cabins, and a lake (spilling over its edges!).

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

First sighting of one of my postcards at their destination! Happy Plotting in 2026!

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Made a #scarf on my #sentro #knittingmachine for Mom's birthday, in candy cane colors for the holidays. 230 rows, which turned out to be 44" in the finished scarf, a little short, but better than my previous scarf with 400 rows, something around 6 feet long.

Red and white knit scarf, using Red Lion "Super Saver" acrylic yarn. Alternating white bands of 30 rows and red bands of 20 rows.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Holiday "Santa" hats, knitted on #sentro #knittingmachine #circularknittingmachine Using Wool-Ease yarn, which is maybe my new favorite, it has the feel of wool, a nice wooly texture and mottled appearance.

"Santa Hat" in "Cranberry" and "Wheat" Wool-Ease yarn. I wanted to make this in time for the holidays. The total hat is 180 rows, with 20 rows for the brim in the "wheat" colored yarn. 20 rows is about two inches, and I didn't plan it out well, so the inside of the hat is the cranberry red color, which is visible at the bottom of the brim.

Still, a mostly satisfying Santa hat for the season.

Red and green Santa hats. Maybe the green hat is for Mrs Claus? Or for one of the elves?

The green hat has a more generous cream brim, contrast with the red hat which has a narrower brim, showing the red showing through at the bottom.

"Santa Hat" in "Wheat" and "Forest Green Heather" Wool-Ease yarn. The hat overall was 180 rows, with the outside being 75 rows of the green yarn, then the brim a generous 45 rows, finishing with a final 60 rows of green for the interior (that adds to 180, right?)

This provides plenty of opportunity to turn the brim up for an inch and a half to two inches without showing the interior of the hat at the bottom of the brim.

The hat is pleasantly warm, the length feels appropriate for a holiday Santa hat. I like it.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

With a thinner yarn, I thought that I might need to add more rows - I could have tested a sample, but I dove in and knitted 200 rows instead of my familiar 150, and it ended up being a longer hat than I normally produce. But maybe that's OK for a holiday-time stocking cap.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Most of the advice online that I've been seeing about yarn selection for the #sentro #circularKnittingMachine is to prefer soft weight 4 yarn, and definitely not thicker/heavier yarn. I will report that this yarn went through the machine just fine, came out with a lightweight hat, it feels soft.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Another hat experiment, a gift for my sister (don't tell her). I wanted to buy some nice yarn at a local yarn place, and I think I misread the yarn weight on the shelf - normally, I buy worsted, weight 4, and I think this might be weight 1 - I don't know a lot about yarn, but that seems significant.

blue and white knit cap, made on a Sentro circular knitting machine

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

The two yarn shops I visited were "Bayshore Yarns" in Silverdale, Washington, and "Stranded by the Sea" in Edmonds, Washington. Both are neat little stores, helpful, friendly staff. I look forward to buying more yarn from each.

my yarn being rewound at "Stranded by the Sea"

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I made this hat in wheat / cranberry / forest green heather yarn, which has a "New England Christmas" vibe to it. You can't see, but the cranberry stripe extends down under the brim - if I were to remake this hat, I'd adjust it to show a little more of that stripe.

knit beanie hat, with 20 rows of "wheat" at the top, followed by 20 rows of "forest green heather", followed by a stripe of 10 rows of wheat, then 20 rows of "cranberry", except that the brim of the hat covers up most of the cranberry stripe.

top of the hat, after affixing a pom-pom reusing the three colors of yarn from the rest of the hat

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

A large proportion of my machine-knitting knowledge comes from Quinn Bender: www.youtube.com/@quinnbender who mentioned (in some video) a few yarns that work well with the Sentro circular knitting machine, including "Wool-Ease" yarn, a wool/acrylic mix, it's soft and scratchy in a way that I like.

youtube.com

Quinn Bender

Hey y'all! I'm Quinn, and I'm a textile artist and designer mostly working with crochet and the Sentro circular knitting machine. Sharing my designs, process, and ideas with y’all brings me so much jo...

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I had a long holiday weekend, which I filled by visiting two yarn shops and making two hats.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I look forward to wearing the combo through the holiday season - blue and gray isn't super on-theme for holidays I celebrate, but neither is it blatantly contrary. #sentro #knittingmachine #circularknittingmachine #hat #scarf #wool

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I *only* knit 165 rows, still had enough for a little pom pom at the end. As I was casting off, I dropped a few stitches, but I managed to rescue them using my crochet hook and newfound skills. Also, I hid the mistake inside the hat.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

So, to go along with the scarf, I decided to make a hat (I know how to do two things on my circular knitting machine, and one is a scarf, and one is a hat). So I weighed the scarf, weighed the remaining yarn, again did math, realized I could knit another 200 rows, which sanity told me would be nuts.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

When I set out to make my most recent scarf, I weighed the yarn I had purchased, did some math, made a design (of sorts) that I expected to approximately use all my yarn. The scarf ended up being 400 rows, 6 feet long, which is a little ridiculous, but it didn't use all the yarn I planned to use.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I'm pleased with the look and feel of this yarn, and the scarf makes me happy. #sentro #knittingmachine #knit #scarf #luckyscarf #wool

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

You can see by the yardstick that the scarf measures a little over two yards in length, which is unnecessary, but gives me numbers for future scarf projects - this particular yarn works out to ~6 feet for 400 rows.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I watched a handful of YouTube videos, including talking about using a "joining stitch" with a crochet hook. I practiced a bit with a throwaway bit of yarn, and got enough of the hang to plunge forward with this scarf.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Using the #sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine to make a scarf today - I had purchased 4 skeins of some nice wool yarn last spring, but I had avoided making this scarf for several months - in part due to season, in part due to not being satisfied with my skill to finish the ends.

knit scarf in blue and gray wool yarn, with a yardstick adjacent, showing that the scarf is approximately 6 feet in length.

wool scarf with alternating bands of blue and gray wool yarn. Bands are made out of this row count:

blue 25
gray 50
blue 75
gray 100
blue 75
gray 50
blue 25

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

The googly eyes are probably not what I'm going to use, but I think they're funny, so maybe there's a googly-eye project in my future. (Cookie Monster?) #sentro #machineknitting #knittingmachine #hat

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

The product of last night's knitting is a two-color light green / dark green beanie, a step towards my eventual plan to make a Kermit The Frog-inspired hat.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

- I've started using "claw weights" to pull the knitted tube down and away from the needles I don't know if any one of these is more significant than the others, but my superstitious self will do all of them for a while to get my hat-momentum back. [cont]

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Things I did that seemed to have helped (in whole or in part?) - I rewound my yarn onto cakes using a yarn winder - I made sure to go slow on the first few rows - I regulate the tension by holding the yarn in my left hand before it goes into the tensioning guide [cont]

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Eventually, I jiggled the pieces into position, and the machine worked again. I took several tries to make a new green hat on the machine, which is one of the two projects I feel competent to attempt. I kept getting tucked stitches, and got increasingly frustrated.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

So, a few days ago, I disassembled the machine, wiped surfaces clean, applied fresh silicone lube to relevant surfaces, reassembled. This was a little more of an adventure than I wanted - there was a step where things were nearly back together, but resting loosely. [cont]

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Continuing to get the (literal, figurative) dust off the hat-knitting pipeline. I was having difficulty with the Sentro knitting machine feeling "tight", and producing what I believe are called "tucked" stitches. I wasn't sure if this was a result of gunk accumulating inside. [thread]

Work in progress picture looking down at a Sentro 48-needle knitting machine with two colors of green yarn, and claw weights.

Finished knit green hat, with light green for the cap, darker green for the brim

Hat with googly eyes placed on top for inspiration - the eyes are not fastened to the hat (yet?), considering other eye-options for this project.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

my previous hat was 120 rows, and felt short. I attempted to knit a hat after that, but the machine was binding up, stitches were getting dropped - I still don't know if the problem was in the yarn, in the machine, or in me. This hat had about half looking good, half kind of gross. More practice.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Today's knitting adventure - I disassembled, cleaned, lubed, and reassembled my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine and proceeded to attempt another experimental green hat (see previous post). This hat has 150 rows, which feels maybe a little longer than I was shooting for.

Knit hat in lime green yarn, knit on a circular knitting machine

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

I consider this a "first draft"/"practice" hat, with ambitions of attaching some sort of eyeballs to the top for a "Kermit the Frog" styling - perhaps using off-the-shelf googly eyes either from Amazon or the local craft store. Perhaps pom poms?

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

New hat for November 2025 - reacquainting myself with my Sentro 48 needle circular knitting machine, reminding myself the procedures for making a hat, remembering how many rows goes into a comfortable hat.

A knit hat in a lime green color, knit on a 48-needle Sentro circular knitting machine

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I generated full sized flow fields that I subsequently clipped to the polygons needed, so each of the blue polygons, each of the black polygons, and even each of the red polygons are unique.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

For this one, I generated 7 different flow fields - the two red pieces shared a flow field, but each color had a different profile of "dispersion" or how wiggly it is, and blue and black had three different orientations. I could have just generated one tile's worth of flow field paths, but no.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Flow Field Half-Hexagon Quads Still, largely experimenting with pen swaps and flow fields. #iDraw #penplotter #flowfield #proceduralart

a hexagon comprising 8 smaller half-hexagon quadrilaterals, in red, blue, and black ink. The quads are filled with flow fields, which look to me a little like wood grain. The red pieces are the smoothest, followed maybe by the blue, then by the black. I find it interesting that I can't tell for certain whether blue is wigglier than the black or vice versa.

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

then, when the black was finished, I took the black pen out of the plotter and inserted a red pen, drew a separate SVG for the red squares

beginning to draw red squares, this time in red, this time mostly vertical

I believe that the red flow field has a little more wiggle, a little more angular variance than the black field, just for extra flavor

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Dave LeCompte (he/him) @bigdicedave.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

I plotted the black lines between the squares first, then the flowfields for the black squares

pen plotter drawing an 8x8 grid of squares

pen plotter filling alternating squares with flow fields, approximately horizontal, using a black pen

two rows of black squares completed, starting on the third row

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