Friday, July 13th, 2012 | Author:
The Gnome So, I can’t count.
I mean, obviously I can count, heck I can even do pretty decent arithmetic in my head! And yet, somehow when I go to cast on for a new project, my brain instantly regresses and I lose all ability to count to more than about 5… or 3.
One day I was casting on for a hat. A hat. 100 stitch cast on. Nice even number, right? Not 1200 stitches for a big lace shawl or anything, right? Yeah, no. 97 stitches. 103 stitches. 101 stitches. 92 stitches (seriously? WTF!). I would count three times and still come out with the wrong number when I knit the first round. I was about to throw it all across the room.
As some of you may remember, I make stitch markers as “freebies” for larger fiber/yarn orders. This means I have a lot of stitch markers lying around at any given moment. Interestingly, I mostly haven’t used stitch markers myself, but suddenly I had an idea.
Stitch markers for counting.
Now this isn’t really a terribly innovative or probably remotely new idea I unvented, but it sure works a treat. And I know a lot of people have problems with this sort of thing when they’re doing larger cast ons.
So for my hat I grabbed 9 stitch markers. Cast on 10, stitch marker, cast on 10, stitch marker, etc. Wham! I now have stitches divided into easily countable groups. I now have starting points to go back to if I lose count while double checking at the end! It’s like freaking magic!
Here’s a terrible photo of using this trick for casting on for the body of the never ending sweater of infinite time consumption.
So, that’s my little trick because I can’t count.
In other news, the sweater is continuing. I might have it done in time for Rhinebeck… or you know… not. Since it took me over a year to manage two matching sleeves.
There should be a shop update up this weekend. I was camping last weekend and it’s been a long week catching up in lab.
The doggles say hi! Come pet us!
That’s all for now!
~The Gnome
