Thursday, February 09, 2006

(63x/27 x 907y) - 4 + .56z = Hoodie

This morning I knit a couple of swatches for my Olympic Hoodie. Things were going well. I knit a ribbed swatch for the main body and a stockinette swatch for the hood. I measured the gauge and around my body and calculated how many stitches I should cast on tomorrow at 2pm. Lovely. Wonderful.

I almost stopped. I figured that I had figured out (approximately) the first 25,072 stitches. That would get me going, right?

Then I thought, "How many times am I going to screw up this hoodie and how much time should allow for those screw ups?" Then I calculated my needle size times my brain size and divided that by the humiliation caused by the level of potential defeat from not finishing the Hoodie by the closing ceremonies. That was (approximately) 7.567 months. Crap.

So, I embarked. I embarked on math. MATH.

I measured the length from where I wanted the bottom of the sweater to my armpit. Then I realized that was the easy part that I had already done. Crap!

Then I measured from my armpit to my shoulder. Then from that shoulder area to the middle of my torso (where the zipper would be). Then, I did (get this) THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM. Yes, I sure did. And I think I even did it right.

Of course when I got my answer, I found that my sweater was only going to come to my belly button, and I just don't have the belly for that nonsense. So then I measured from my shoulder to where I really wanted the hoodie to end.

And then I stared at the paper for a long, long time. I drew a doodle of the hoodie in my head. I multiplied some numbers that meant nothing. I felt proud that I had done the Pythagorean theorem. Then I had lunch. Then I wrote in my blog.

So here I am. Knowing full well what the first 25,072 stitches should look like and having no clue how to make the sleeves do what they should. I've designed a couple of baby sweaters, so I'm not quite sure why I'm a special kind of 'tard when it comes to these hoodie numbers.

And so do you all know what time it is now? Time to bail out of the Olympics? No, no, no. Time to take a nap? Sadly, no. Time to buy liquor? Well, yes probably, but that will have to wait until I'm technically off the clock. It is time to make it up. Yup, it's time to pull some select numbers straight out of me arse, write them on a piece of paper, and pretend like they represent some coherent pattern.

I'm tellin' yuh....I'm feeling like a figure skater who throws in a Triple Axle at the end, just for the hell of it. The same figure skater who falls directly on her arse for said arrogance and spends the next 3 years in physical therapy.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That sounds impossibly complicated to a math challenged person like me. Good luck getting it figured out - I'm still routing for you to win gold in the knitting olympics!

3:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

last night we had our knitting group...
finally got done with one project...have a poncho that is half done and waiting on 5 skeins to come in, just found out today that the company Angel, has dicontinued the color...flippin bastards. so the owner of the shop is searching mad around town to locate some for me. so ill be working on a hat tonight...to keep me busy. good times. oh the joys of knitting!

5:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

See, I knew there was a reason I don't knit. There is MATH involved.

I love, love your last 2 paragraphs. I almost snarfed when I read them, and I wasn't even drinking anything.

9:07 PM  
Blogger mamatulip said...

I don't do math, therefore, I don't knit. LOL.

9:21 PM  
Blogger Tink said...

I'm with Mama T. My hoodie would come out looking like it belonged to a Cone Head.

11:34 AM  
Blogger Brooke said...

And she even snuck in a timely, Olympic-related comment...very nice.

4:48 PM  
Blogger Dawn said...

I have some quilts that were re-designed in that very way...But they always turn out better than the original design.

9:04 PM  

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