Friday, December 23, 2016

ONCE AGAIN, KNITTING AND MATH LIGHTBULB MOMENT!


I needed to make a baby hat in a hurry, so I went to my go-to pattern called “The Tri-Cornered Hat.”  I’ve made this cute hat a few times, as it’s quick and easy.   As I started thinking about this project, I realized “Oh, my gosh! I’m doing so much math.”  There’s math right off the bat.  It uses chunky yarn and big needles = fast knitting because everything is big.  If you’ve read my past posts, you know that gauge is very important.   A lot more math is necessary when figuring out the amount of stitches to cast on.

Having dug through my yarn stash and found an appropriate chunky pink yarn, I began the cast on using size 11 needles.  I didn’t know exactly how many stitches to start with but knew that, due to my pattern, I needed a number of stitches that was divisible by three and then that resulting number had to be divisible by two.  (Pretty confusing as three things need to be correct – the proper circumference for the size of hat desired, a number divisible by three then two.) 

As I cast on and got near the needed circumference, I began analyzing the more complicated math.  I was right around 40 stitches when I looked at the size, but it was too small.  I thought, “why not go to 50 and see how big that is” but then realized that 50 is not divisible by three.  Oh, 51 is, 3 ÷ 51 = 17, but 17 is not divisible by 2.  What next? 45?  3 ÷ 45 = 15 but again, 15 didn’t work with the next step of math.  46?  Nope.  47?  Nope.  Ahh, 48 was the magic number.  3 ÷ 48 = 16.  16 ÷ 2 = 8.  Yes.  I enlarged my cast on to 48 and it looked to be about the right size.  (Who knows how big a nine month’s head is anyway?  Plus, there’s always some stretch – or room to grow, right?)

Now that I had the right number of cast on stitches, I began knitting in the round.  The pattern calls for at least 6” of knitting before working the tri-corner portion of the hat.  But, uh-oh.  I was running out of yarn.  I had thought this might happen, so I had a complimentary color for the top of the hat, but this also posed a math problem.  This yarn, while called chunky, was much thicker than the hand made yarn I started with, which would mean altering the needle size with this new yarn to continue making the same size stitch as the rest of the hat.   I knew I had to go down several needle sizes so grabbed a size nine and gave it a try.  Creating a nice tight knit stitch resulted in a similar size, so I could move on with this new yarn. 
 









Once I reached seven inches in length of the hat (I added a little more for safe measure), I began dividing my stitches per the pattern.  I separated my stitches into three pairs of 8 and cast off using the kitchner stitch.  Whala.  Hat completed in short order with a little math lesson included
.

6 comments:

  1. Great collection of blogs for anyone looking to get into investing! Thanks for sharing
    Crude oil signals
    Indices signals
    wti signals

    ReplyDelete
  2. nice work dear and its helpful post, Thank you for sharing.
    Classified Ads in London

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awesome blog, i always enjoy & read the post you are sharing!
    Thank for your very good article...!
    ตารางคะแนนพรีเมียร์ลีก

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Best Educational Blogspot website.I want share my idea.
    Let visit forex signal provider
    Forex signals

    ReplyDelete