I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

After a bit of serious drama at my house in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, it looks like my trip to Boston/Rhinebeck is still a go. I won’t have Internet access for more than a week although there just may be a guest blogger here to entertain you on Thursday or Friday.

I’m excited to meet many of you for the first time, face-to-face. As my local grrls know, I completely suck at remembering names and other relevant information. So please forgive me if I mess up. And please stop me and say hello if you see me. You can recognize me in three ways:

1. I look like this (only my hair is a little shorter now):

2. If you’re playing Blogger Bingo, I’ll be carrying this tote bag.

3. If the weather forecast is wrong and it doesn’t rain on Saturday/Sunday I’ll be wearing this:

Ciao

Well, my Rhinebeck Not-Sweater is officially off the needles.

I just need to find time to block it before I leave early next week. And it’s raining so it may take longer than usual to dry.

Moving on to a completely different subject . . .

Does anyone know anything about Occidental College? Did you go there or do you possibly work there? My son just went on an overnight campus visit and I’m interested in the 411.

My Rhinebeck Not-Sweater caused me quite a scare this morning.

Tuesday night at Stitch ‘N Bitch it dawned on me that I might run out of yarn. So this morning I decided to calculate my progress by using the mathematical process I blogged about a while ago. You can see my instructions here. Or you can check out Dorothy’s post on calculating the progress on a top-down triangular shawl. Her formula is more tidy than mine but it’s basically the same.

Anyway, to make a long story short, by my calculation I have completed approximately 77% of the shawl (36,284 stitches so far). When I weighed the remaining yarn and realized there are only 31 grams left, I went into full panic mode. Why? Because I suck so much at arithmetic that I thought I had 33% remaining to knit. 77 from 100 is 33, right? Well, no, of course not.

After contemplating all the possible ways to alter the design so I could squeeze the shawl out of the one, 875-yard skein of Alpaca With a Twist Fino, it finally hit me that I only had 23% left to knit, not 33%, and I would have plenty of yarn. Doh!

A word of warning to all you first graders out there . . . pay attention when your teacher instructs you in basic subtraction.

Well, I know I have enough yarn but it’s looking like the shawl will be huge on me. Right now I have about 400 stitches on the needle and I still have 26 rows to go. I’m just about to start the trees in the lower border.

Will the shawl be finished in time for Rhinebeck? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing’s for sure, I could probably make better progress on the shawl if I put down this mitten I started on Sunday.