Promising start
My big need is help during the crocheting of Amigurumi. Because I’m still new and also have ADHD, is very easy to me to lose track in the middle of a long round, or even get mixed up with the last round. Even a multi-level counter doesn’t help much.
The fact that Crocheteer shows what you need to do and has a repeat functionality is good. But two parts could be improved:
First, it isn’t super “ergonomic” during crocheting. I’m comparing against KagiBari (the other app closest to what I want), and that has a focused view where you see the current stitch and a few prev/next ones to the side and touching most of the screen will advance. You can also use voice commands (I think using an iOS API), which is helpful.
The other thing is granularity. While it is nice that you can have a sequence with its own counter, sometimes it is nice to just go stitch by stitch. KagiBari can switch modes of going stitch by stitch or group by group. It also understands the stitches (like an inc makes one more than the last round), which gives some confidence the import was correct, otherwise the stitch totals would be wrong. Could even catch pattern mistakes.
But KagiBari has a big limitation of no way to show a text instruction on the screen, so you need to keep the original pattern around for color changes or anything else. It doesn’t even have general project notes. It also hasn’t been updated in 6 months, so might be dead. If Crocheteer can pick up some of those features, I’d be willing to pay for that.
There’s other things that could be cool like being able to color the stitches, so you could see visually the next stitch will be red and prep for the change without a text note each time.
Btw, right now the image import from patterns in Crocheteer doesn’t work well. If you assign to instructions, it just sticks them in the first round and can’t move them to another round. And after import, pics can only come from the camera roll. Maybe it’d be better if the project had its own gallery that pattern import put into and then you can pull from there into pic instructions.
Also, it’s annoying that you’re hit with the subscription up front and a short 3-day trial. I like it not being ad-supported, but would rather it just started very limited like you could only have one project at a time vs needing to approve the trial and immediately cancel it, just to see how the app works.
But it does seem promising for such a new app! I don’t need most of the features in the big apps like YarnBuddy that are geared towards knitting or clothing or project management. I just want something to make the process of crocheting itself less stressful.
Response from developer
Thank you so much for the review! We're constantly working on adding new features, but at the same time making sure the app doesn't get overloaded. We checked out KagiBari and they actually have some things done pretty nicely. The stitch counting per round {x done}/{y to do} is definitely interesting. We're also considering adding a bigger button at the bottom of the screen for moving between instructions. Voice commands are on our list too, though that's probably a longer term goal. We're also thinking about adding stitch by stitch mode. Right now we're just figuring out how to solve it best so it feels intuitive. By the way, we've often seen that our algorithm actually corrects errors from hard to read patterns during import. As you noticed, with us you can add any text notes you need besides the instructions themselves. Our algorithm tries to do this automatically, but of course you can adjust it based on your own needs. We really like your idea about color coding instructions! We're still thinking about how to do this best from the user perspective, but it's a great suggestion. Ultimately it's about relying on intuition and minimizing potential mistakes. About pattern import, we understand the problem. We're just adding functionality that will let you save those photos from instructions so you can re-upload them. This will be available in a day or two. Moving images between rounds is also in the plans. Crocheteer won't have ads, that's our principle. We just switched to a freemium model, so the app is free and you can unlock some additional features. The app is dedicated to people who crochet and it's only going to get better! Thanks again for the review and super constructive feedback. Feel free to reach out at support@crocheteer.com if you have any more questions and to stay in touch!
Just great!!!
Response from developer
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this - your feedback truly means a lot to us! We’re delighted to hear that the app lives up to its promise. Our goal is to provide a top-notch crochet experience from the very start.