[knitting] sweater failure

[juldea]

...

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.

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Hehe. I like working off of pretty patterns, though, and that requires having specific gauges. :)

Also, um, do I know you? heh.

[starfireming.livejournal.com]

Know me? No. But you will, my lovely, oh, you will....

I knew of you cause I know your londo from way back, and then I was surfing something positive thingimajiggies and your name looked familiar.. and then I was startled to find you were amazingly awesome.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

Flattery will get you everywhere, yes (or at least friended!), but what in particular struck you as amazingly awesome?

[starfireming.livejournal.com]

1) the knitting
2) the interests(J. R. "Bob" Dobbs! Fabulous!)
3) the Chris Rock
4) you make teh londo happy

there, your market research has been refined and you are better able to cast your net among the Internet fish.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

1) Knitting I picked up about two years ago and haven't been able to put it down. If only it didn't bother my wrists so much and I could try to make money doing it!
2) If you know Bob, then you've automatically got cool points in my book, too. Woot.
3) I don't often quote Chris Rock, but that script was recently brought to my attention after an IRC conversation, so I shared. ;)
4) And y'know, it doesn't take much to keep londo happy. Men are easy to please. ;) But I do try!

[starfireming.livejournal.com]

I like patterns, too, I just tend to make them up in my head.