I Can't Make Change

This is two days worth of knitting.


My little boy had a cold and that gave me more time to knit than usual. He goes into a trance when he's sick. We spent a whole day on the couch in a puffy eyed, snot nosed Pixar daze. When I began this sweater I swatched for gauge and got 18 sts over 4 inches. Because I couldn't go down a needle size without being in danger of the finished project being closer to knitted armor than a sweater, I chose to knit the petite size. What you are looking at here is an XL sweater. I got about halfway through the back before I measured the width. It measures 25 inches. I was aiming for something in the range of 20 to 22 inches. 25 inches is way too big. There is something very confusing about knitting a petite size and ending up with an XL size. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how this had happened. Then I remembered something. I'm dyslexic with numbers.
You can see how this might be a problem. 8,9,3,6 and sometimes 0 are often exchanged, rearranged or transposed in my head. I went back to my swatch and measured. I had been getting 16 sts over 4 inches, not 18. This sucks. This sucks big time. There is pretty much no way I can knit this sweater with this wool. In fact, I'm wondering if I can ever make it through a sweater without some critical error. The first sweater that I ever knit was a very simple drop sleeve cardigan. I actually knit the same sleeve 4 times because I kept reading the numbers incorrectly.
Having dyscalculia and knitting is like having dyslexia and wanting to be a copy editor. It's a nasty combination of inability and desire. I've tried all sorts of things to help me avoid making number mistakes while knitting, but the sad truth of it is that knitting is all about numbers. One extra stitch in the wrong place has the potential to cause hours of angst. I've got no clue how to reconcile my love of knitting with my learning disability.
Fortunately, the blow of finding out that I had wasted two days of my life was softened by a package arriving.


This is Blue Sky Alpacas, alpaca silk. It's for a new lace project. It has a beautiful sheen and halo.


After suffering several brutal sweater failures I don't have it in me to take on 40 pages of lace charts. I've chosen instead a lace project with only 2 charts. So far, I've spent a good 2 hours ripping back and fixing mistakes, so it's already proven to be a wise decision. The gauge is also a lot more friendly. This is the beginnings of a swatch for the 40 page "Swan Lake" project.


I really disliked working with yarn that fine. It makes me queasy just thinking about the hump I'd develop on my back from trying to see each stitch as I slowly undid 400 or so stitches after missing a yarn over.
I'm really hoping that I have the patience to make myself a sweater. It's hard going into something knowing that you'll probably fail, but I guess that's something I'm going to have to learn to live with.