no longer delusional

I had fantasies of finishing the Vertical Stripes body this weekend. I must have been delusional. A row takes me about 20 minutes, and my row gauge is about 10 rows per inch. You can do the math.

I did make a lot of progress. Look!


Ignore the measuring tape. I had it there for a sense of scale, but as it wouldn't stay in place, the measurement is wrong. The body is 18".

I'm aiming for about 8 pattern repeats (25 rows per repeat) for the body, which means I have about 1.5 to go. When I finish the 7th repeat, I'll sit down with a pencil and paper and figure out the neck shaping.

Thanks to TJ, Anne, and an anonymous commenter, I'm feeling better about yardage. I still know that I should have more to work with than I do (or rather, should have had to buy more yarn if I were planning to make the sweater as sized in the book), but it's possible that I'll make it with what I have. It turns out that I was probably wrong about the half and half thing. The sleeves should take 1/3 the yardage of the body, not 1/2. Perhaps I once heard that they take 50% of the body yardage, and misremembered that as 50% of the total yardage, which are obviously two very different figures.

At this point, I've started on the third of four balls of cream yarn. According to the math, I can use 2/3 of this ball for the body, and theoretically still have enough for the sleeves. I think I'll come in under 2/3 of this ball for the body, so I'll probably start the sleeves with the yarn I have instead of ordering more. But I'm not going to let myself obsess too much, and won't allow myself weigh the ball until the body is done. Assuming it works out, I'll probably put the first sleeve on scrap yarn when I get to the point where I'd start the corrugated rib cuff. If anything, I think I could get away with potential dye lot differences in the cuffs and collar, since corrugated ribbing changes the appearance of the yarn so much anyway.