You may recall that back in August I began knitting Rob's never-ending sweater. Admittedly, it feels never-ending because I work on multiple projects at a time, but once it reached a point wherein it was no longer easily portable, it became my "main squeeze" for evening & movie knitting. Still, due to its size it's taking a long while to knit.
Last week I worked in all the ends except for the neck (which I have to re-do for the second time, but more on that later) and picked up stitches for sleeve one. I had three balls of yarn left, from the bag of twelve we'd received in July. One ball made it 5 inches. Five inches! The sleeves, together, will be a bit over 40 inches long. My sharp-as-a-tack math skills told me that, um, three balls was nowhere near enough.
Drat!
I started calling around, looking for a dyelot match. Now, we ordered the yarn in early summer, and picked it up in July. Since it's luscious yarn, I feared our chances of finding a match locally were slim. As luck would have it, though, on my third call I hit the jackpot. A local shop had three balls left. That would give me three balls per sleeve, which ought to do it since the sleeves will become narrower as I go....right?
I continued on sleeve one, having gone through a whole ball of yarn, when it occurred to me yesterday that I should have Rob try it on. The sleeves seemed rather wide, and upon closer inspection we agreed that they were ridiculously large - even on his "big guns". :-) I set about threading my needle back through a row at the beginning of the sleeve, and frogged the seven inches I'd knit.
Unsure exactly of how to proceed, I considered just winging it, doing two decreases every sixth row (my pattern called for a single decrease at that interval), but thought "Hey, this is where those much-talked-about "basic" math comes in handy." So I set about figuring out the circumference of the sleeve at the shoulder, its desired circumference at the wrist, how long we want the sleeves to end up, and the number of rows in which I have to reach that smaller circumference (based upon my row gauge). That part was easy, simply a matter of gathering measurements and gauge of information.
Then I was stumped. How does one calculate the interval of decrease rows? That is to say, if I needed to decrease 24 stitches within 80 rows (for the desired circumference at elbow length), and I planned to decrease two stitches per decrease row, then every X row would be a decrease row. How to find X? I asked Rob. He's completed some very scary college-level math. We made a graph. My brain hurt. I think we figured it out. Wanna see?
Now, in my defense I would like to say that I attended (at last count) twelve different schools in twelve years of schooling, Kindergarten through high school graduation. Such is the schooling of a military brat. All that moving around makes for a lot of holes in one's education. My math skills probably suffered the most from it. I made it through high school Algebra II by the skin of my teeth (didn't even bother attempting Calculus), and figured out a way to avoid college-level math all together. I'm great at basic arithmetic, enjoy it even, but when letters and numbers mix it up in a single "sentence", my brain turns to scrambled eggs. So, figuring out X, when we're talking about stitches and rows, was starting to make me feel nauseous.
Kind of like when, in the sixth grade, I had to go to the board to do an algebra problem. After standing there staring at that mind-numbing tangle of letters and numbers until well after the other kids had finished, the teacher exclaimed, "I really don't know why you're having so much trouble with this." - and not in a "here, let me show you" kind of tone. Thanks, Mr. H., for teaching me how NOT to get through to kids.
Right, back to the sweater. So now that we've figured out a better rate of decrease, given his measurements and my gauge, I'll be back to work on sleeve one. I had hoped to finish it in time for Rob's birthday next week, but unless sleeve one version 2.0 works out more to his liking, and I magically find more time to knit, I don't see that happening. New goal: finish the sweater in time for him to wear it on our Christmas trip to my parents' house. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted!
Just let me know if you want to see more math. Ha ha ha ha ha.
Look! I can't even fit the whole sweater in the camera's view finder!
So lucky on finding that yarn. You were obviously deserving of some good yarn karma.
Knitting math is my "job" in our family, a fact I find very funny because I used to cry over my math homework. It turns out that if it has to do with fractions or ratios I'm pretty capable. However, getting your husband involved is genius! The Duke is a math whiz, he should be contributing to the knitting math too!
I hope version 2.0 goes smoothly.
Posted by: Duchess | December 02, 2007 at 10:12 PM