CCATP #777 Angela Preston on Creating an Open Source Knitting Font Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite

One of the great joys of Mastodon is that I’m meeting new people with a cross-section of interests that overlap with my own. By following hashtags like #programming and #technology and #knitting and #crocheting, I can find fellow nerds who are also into the crafts I enjoy.

I discovered this week’s guest, Angela Preston through these hashtags. She’s a knitter and she created a website by hand that explains how she built a font for knitting at [sites.google.com/…](https://sites.google.com/site/kauriknitsfont/kauris-knitting-font). The best part is she created the font with an open source tool called [FontStruct](https://fontstruct.com/).

The conversation bounces back and forth between explaining what knitting is, how traditional text-based patterns are written, how diagram-based knitting works, and then flipping over to how a font is created in FontStruct. Angela is fun and interesting and I think you’ll really enjoy the conversation even if you’re not a programmer or a knitter.

Angela’s font is called Kauri Knits, where Kauri is a name from the book series “Dancing Gods” by Jack L Chalker (https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Gods-Part-River-Demons/dp/0345402464/?crid=1E7QQ19TIYYZU&sprefix=dancing+gods,aps,157). (It’s also the Māori name for a cool tree in New Zealand.)

If people want to follow Angela on Mastodon, you find her at @AngelaPreston@toot.site (https://toot.site/@AngelaPreston).