Stupid Mistake

I am knitting the brown/pink Entrelac yoke sweater (to fit me) and I know for certain that I will run out of brown yarn, since the front took a ball and a half and there are only three more balls sitting here.  What a boneheaded mistake, not buying enough of the same dye lot.  Hmm.  It looked like a big pile at the time.

Tomorrow I'll go to the store and hope for another ball or two of the same dye lot.  I do love a day in the house, but it's time to leave the cave.  A little fresh air away from the computers and knitting machines will be nice (weather here is spectacular), plus, eventually we will run out of groceries.  You can't eat leftover Christmas goodies forever.  Someone might start to crave some protein.

Today was my last vacation day of 2011, and I spent it charting the sweaters for the Entrelac book.  Why, it wasn't that different from yesterday in the office, when I was sitting at the office computer balancing bank accounts.  Either way, I'm sitting at a computer, either at home or work, playing with spreadsheets.  Who knew knitting was so much like accounting?

Since I finally have settled on the knitting method, I sat down and worked out all the sizes.  I even did the extra calculations to move the yoke higher in back than front for an ideal fit and slant the sleeve tops to match.  Of course, there's a chasm between little charts covered in numbers that nobody can read but me (and I won't even make much sense to me, either, once they're stale) and a narrative that folks can actually follow.

Plus, I have to solve the size problem, that is, how to put all the sizes in the book and still have a readable book.  The charts are for multiple kids and adults sizes. I am thinking about doing my colored chart thing (you pick a color for your size and then fill the numbers from that color into the instructions) but there will be chunks of instructions and then little blocks of chart.  Of course, I might do it some other way...

I also want to mark the patterns with where to increase or decrease the length.  For my son and I, we both wanted a little extra length in the arms, and details like that make a huge difference in whether it ends up being a favorite sweater or a denizen of the back of the closet.