![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juldea...
I was getting pretty damned close to the end of the Eris sweater for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaiya. I was at the hem even! Hem and sleeves! All that needed to be done! Much quicker than expected.
I saw that I was running out of yarn. I have two skeins left, and once again, hem and sleeves. "Hmm," I say, "We definitely measured this out, and it wasn't a problem. I should have enough yarn."
I normally work with the sweater all bunched up in my lap, so I decided to lay it out and see how it's going. I lay it out. "Hmm," I say, "That looks kind of large. I wonder if I went off gauge (knitted larger stitches, in laymen's terms) while working the body." Being atshogunhb's house, I ask him if there's a ruler nearby. A tape measurer is acquired, and I lay it against my body stitches.
The sweater should be knitted at 5 stitches to an inch. I stare and stare, and recount a few times, and I'm still looking at something like 3.5 stitches to an inch. "Hmm," I say, "This is impossible. I went out of my way to swatch and measure gauge before I began this sweater, and I got 5 stitches per inch, but this sweater is showing a fairly uniform 3.5 stitches to an inch."
"Hmm," I reply to myself, "Didn't you measure your swatches against a dollar bill, which you firmly believe to be 2 inches tall?"
"Hmm," I answer, reaching into my wallet for a dollar bill and placing it against the tape measurer. "Dollar bills appear to, in reality, be about 2 2/3 inches tall. When you were measuring 10 stitches against a dollar bill, it was 10 stitches aross approximately 2 2/3 inches."
"Hmm," I mutter. "10 stitches to 2 2/3 inches is equivalent to 3 2/3 stitches to one inch. If my work was supposed to be 5 stitches to an inch and instead I've been working at 3 2/3, my work is 36% wider than I wanted it."
"Hmm," I say. "Fuck."
On the bright side, four things:
1. I have only been working on the sweater for 3.5 weeks. Thinking of having to undo 3.5 weeks worth of work and restart is a lot easier than thinking of having to undo an almost complete sweater and remake it. Plus, it means I will still be done before the "sometime in March" due date.
2. I probably won't have problems with running out of yarn, now, since the work will be ~73% the size it was.
3. I now know that US bills are not 2 inches tall.
4. I now know that my skills at eyeballing/estimating/checking measurements are POOR. I suspected this before, but I have never had such concrete proof as failing to notice that something which I consider to be 2 inches long is in fact over a third longer. For such a short distance, this is a fairly significant difference.
I was getting pretty damned close to the end of the Eris sweater for
chaiya. I was at the hem even! Hem and sleeves! All that needed to be done! Much quicker than expected.I saw that I was running out of yarn. I have two skeins left, and once again, hem and sleeves. "Hmm," I say, "We definitely measured this out, and it wasn't a problem. I should have enough yarn."
I normally work with the sweater all bunched up in my lap, so I decided to lay it out and see how it's going. I lay it out. "Hmm," I say, "That looks kind of large. I wonder if I went off gauge (knitted larger stitches, in laymen's terms) while working the body." Being at
shogunhb's house, I ask him if there's a ruler nearby. A tape measurer is acquired, and I lay it against my body stitches.The sweater should be knitted at 5 stitches to an inch. I stare and stare, and recount a few times, and I'm still looking at something like 3.5 stitches to an inch. "Hmm," I say, "This is impossible. I went out of my way to swatch and measure gauge before I began this sweater, and I got 5 stitches per inch, but this sweater is showing a fairly uniform 3.5 stitches to an inch."
"Hmm," I reply to myself, "Didn't you measure your swatches against a dollar bill, which you firmly believe to be 2 inches tall?"
"Hmm," I answer, reaching into my wallet for a dollar bill and placing it against the tape measurer. "Dollar bills appear to, in reality, be about 2 2/3 inches tall. When you were measuring 10 stitches against a dollar bill, it was 10 stitches aross approximately 2 2/3 inches."
"Hmm," I mutter. "10 stitches to 2 2/3 inches is equivalent to 3 2/3 stitches to one inch. If my work was supposed to be 5 stitches to an inch and instead I've been working at 3 2/3, my work is 36% wider than I wanted it."
"Hmm," I say. "Fuck."
On the bright side, four things:
1. I have only been working on the sweater for 3.5 weeks. Thinking of having to undo 3.5 weeks worth of work and restart is a lot easier than thinking of having to undo an almost complete sweater and remake it. Plus, it means I will still be done before the "sometime in March" due date.
2. I probably won't have problems with running out of yarn, now, since the work will be ~73% the size it was.
3. I now know that US bills are not 2 inches tall.
4. I now know that my skills at eyeballing/estimating/checking measurements are POOR. I suspected this before, but I have never had such concrete proof as failing to notice that something which I consider to be 2 inches long is in fact over a third longer. For such a short distance, this is a fairly significant difference.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 23 Jan 2006 13:43 (UTC)no subject
on 23 Jan 2006 15:20 (UTC)