Sleeeeves

Here's what happens when you knit by the seat of your pants, don't take notes and make two items that need to be exactly alike at very different times from one another:

What's that you say? That my friend, is a giant ball of re-do, aka try-again, aka knit-it-over. Or you could just call it, I messed up so bad there's no fixing it.

This is a once and future sleeve. I made two sleeves for my beautiful Twisted Yoke Cardigan and when I got to the end of the second one I realized that it was about an inch and a half longer than the first one. Oooops! When I went back to diagnose my problem I found that I had put the decreases in at too short an interval on the first one. Both sleeves followed the pattern but one was knit a size smaller than the other one. Apparently I couldn't remember what size I was working on when I started the first sleeve, or I just simply thought I was making a different size than I really was. Why didn't I write anything down when I started the sweater?? It's because I think my memory is infallible, but unfortunately it is not. And I had proof in my two different sized sleeves.

At first I thought I could make up for it by knitting on to the end of the first one but then I realized that the sleeve would be oddly shaped no matter what I did and they would never match. Maybe it would look funny and maybe it wouldn't but I don't care to find out so I ripped. I ripped both of them. I have a little remorse about ripping the one that was probably right but I was so rattled by the discrepancy in length that I don't want to chance it. These will be exactly the same! At least the pattern for the sleeves is simple and doesn't take too long to knit. Stupid sleeves.

Hopefully (but I doubt it) I have learned my lesson and will take very detailed notes in future. At least write down what size I'm making. That's pretty simple right? I can do that.

Decrease Evenly

I've been working on the Meringue Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits and I finally reached the yoke decreases only to find that the pattern stated simply decrease x number of stitches evenly. Whahaaa?! That's annoying. I like the pattern tell me how to make the sweater. Like it's supposed to. Not, "here do some math." So I tried to divide the decreases by the number of stitches but that number is not accurate since each decrease takes two stiches and I want one at each edge. I found I would reach the end of the rows with either not enough decreases or too many to fit on the row. Very irksome.

I thought long and hard about this problem and decided to search the internet because it is all knowing, well sort of. Someone else must have encountered this same problem before and come up with a viable solution and it's likely that they posted it.

The first thing I came across was from the author of the pattern and involved doing long division by hand. To me it didn't look mathematically plausible and anything that involves arithmetic without a calculator is just silly, so I kept looking.

I then came upon this lady's page! She uses real math! SCIENCE! EQUATIONS! They're great. I tried this formula and it worked. Simple, easy, calculator friendly. Maybe I should send it to the pattern author. :)

Others

So I've been looking for a compilation of inspiring and helpful websites to inspire and help me with my knitting. I'm not a patient woman and I cannot sort through myriads of crap (meaning chat threads, and layer up on layer of BLAH!) that exist in websites that may have this information. Thus, I have not been able to find the helpful and inspiring index I'm looking for.

Since I can't find it I must create it, and I plan to do that here. Look for links under Inspiration and Help.