Sure does feel like Monday again...

First, the good news. I got the okay, and this is the little doll sweater that was knit with the percentage system (the knitee, a veritable genius, asks to remain anonymous):


Isn't it great? And just goes to show: this system really does work for ANY size (except you gotta be careful, getting the neck holes big enough on children's sweaters, 'cause their heads are proportionately a lot bigger than an adult's).

Any time any of you use one of my patterns, articles, or wild-ass ideas for a project, I'd LOVE to see photos of it. They really make my day.

Anyway. On to the disaster. (There's always a disaster. At least this one doesn't involve the baby and cat food.)



This is the wrap. There's about a ball's worth of yarn knit up, there... (I'm doing the old 'knit two rows off one ball, and then two rows off another ball' to try to avoid color pooling. It's about half working.) The wrap is aboug 7 inches/18cm long. I've got eight balls of this yarn. That means if I use every last scrap it will come out to about 56 inches. I wanted 60. And this is assuming that nothing goes wrong. So... do I buy more yarn or not? (The good news is, Webs, where I got this stuff, has another 550 balls in stock, so I probably have a while to make up my mind.)

My other two chores for the day are to try to get out in this heat (it's like a summer in hell out there - 95 degrees with a heat index of 106. If you're wondering what that is in Celsius, it's DAMN HOT.) and find a sixteen inch size one knitting needle. (I also need assorted lengths of size zero circulars, but the one will do for a start.) Then I need to sit down and do all the freaking math needed for the Blue Shimmer (remember, I'm using a different gauge and making a size larger than the pattern goes up to). Yoke sweaters are about as complex as math gets when it comes to knitting. I will BET you there's an algorythm that works for calculating yoke decreases. But of course that IS the part of math I suck the most at. Right now I'm staring at a chart that's written for WAIST UP knitting involving formulas like "Y2 = Y1 - 33%" which is jolly good BUT I'M KNITTING IT FROM THE NECK DOWN.

When I'm done I'm bloody well posting it on the internet. After all, it's MY math.

Y = 138% Pass the Newcastle Brown Ale.