Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Oh Good Lord!















You know you're in trouble when a pattern starts out, "We encourage you to explore the following books to help you develop a thorough understanding of sweater structure and design, which will enable you to knit custom-fit sweaters of your own design." This is trouble with a capitol "T".

Let me just put it this way... there is math involved. Lots of math. They know not who they are dealing with here. I come from a long line of math impaired people. Well that's not really true but I pretty much did give birth to a long line of math impaired people. (sorry for your luck kids)

Imagine my dismay at paragraphs like, "To determine your number of cast-on stitches you will need to multiply your gauge by the chest circumference in inches = ___ stitches. This number of stitches will be the base number you will use for other calculations in your sweater." Um, yeah. Uh huh. Riiiiiight.

Then we have: Multiply base number by .8 (20%) for ribbing number. For example: 180 X 8 = 144.

Not to mention this:
Preparing the sleeves.
You need to place 8% of the base number of stitches on a scrap bit of yarn. This number will be the same amount of stitches that you held at the underarm of the body.
Base Number X .08 _______.

But lets get to the bottom line. Could I do this? Probably. Do I want to? Not in this lifetime.

I want someone to tell me to cast on 144 stitches for the back.
And cast on 144 stitches for the front.
Etc. Etc. Etc.

I know some people who would think they died and went to heaven with this pattern. Math people. You know you're out there. You know you want this pattern. You know it will fit you like no other when you're finished with it.

I paid for it. (very little, thank God) and I will send this pattern to the first person who emails me to tell me that they want it. C'mon. admit that you're a numbers cruncher.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I'm with you -- definitely don't enjoy the math, but do it when I have to. I'm finding that a lot of patterns require some maths, so I'm trying to get better at it. I don't know how many more calculations are involved, but the ones you've given don't seem too labor intensive and a basic calculator would be a very good friend. I bet you could figure it out!

Shell said...

Holly,
Have I shown you my Sweater wheel?? It has all the numbers- youjust pick the size and start. Hehehe...
Bring that to the next meeting- we can have fun burning it.

minijaxter said...

nah dont burn it holly!
ill take it.