Monday Morning Mirth

SUMMERTIME. And the living is easy…

Especially in my neighborhood!

Here, this weekend, you would’ve found a carnival like none other: the Wicker Park Fest!

Right along my old street, I found lots of sound and excitement, music, street theatre, eats (corn-on-the-cob, cevapcici, ice cream) but what to my wandering eye should appear, over all, hovering in the air, that Mistress of Low Culture herself, dancing to the music…

…all lovin’ the stylings of Midwest Hype, who play what I call Urban Fusion,

which is something I hadn’t really heard a lot of up here — (but have heard all over New Orleans) — and now we can swing too to: “an absolutely ruthless explosive jam-funk driven sound with flashes of reggae, hip-hop, and even prog rock”

blowing up Evergreen St in a stage area surrounded by: my dry cleaners

and the dress shop where everybody gets their quinceañera threads

where you would find plenty of the Hairstyle of Summer Chicago 2012, where, NO, we won’t be beaten, vexed, nay, Melted Down by +100 temps, we will

TOPKNOT !

In the grand tradition of Chicago Cupcaking, where one perches their ribbed hat high on the center of their head all winter long, the ladies and gentlemen of Wicker Park park that twist as high as it will go…

Myself, I was in pigtails…

This summer has been a whirlwind thus far!

Lot’s of traveling, presenting, organizing, writing and sampling…

Add a heaping dose of torrid weather, and, maybe, just maybe, I have SOME kind of excuse for not being finished with this:

Here’s my black cotton CINNIE that I started few weeks ago.

Now, if you have the pattern, you might notice there’s something a little screwy with mine. :)

All was going really well until I started to realize something potentially embarrassing: either I’d lost a ball of yarn or horrors of horrors!

I didn’t get enough to make the project!

It would’ve been perfect to blame this discombobulation on the 100+ degree temperatures, day-after-day of screaming weather, here in the Big Windy, but no.

After a thorough hunt around the hut, and a look-up of the original sales receipt, it was all me. I simply didn’t read my own directions!

I was unoriginally (and pathetically), in a word: short.

Now comes the part that I hope you will always choose to miss: trying to rationalize HOW one can squeeze it out of what’s on hand ANY WAY.

Sidebar: this is one of the top 5 support email requests that land in my mailbox. Usually it’s fine – the knitter is off by a few yards and I can suggest a couple of quick tweaks to make it fly.

But this?

Witness my denial: this pattern includes top down sleeves. That means you can stop at any old point that you like. So, instead of following the pattern to the sleeve hem, in my confabulated state, I decided to go as far as the underarm joins, then try for the win.

The sleeve stitches were put on scrap yarn and the Body of the sweater was then next in line.

Pretzel Logic or Clown Knitting?: I figured if I could make this about an inch shorter (typical tweak to stretch low yardage) I could appraise what yarn was left to finish.

Now you can do this a few ways, but I like to weigh things.

I have a postal scale and can measure the ounces left in a partial ball pretty quickly.

Then, using the yardage on the ball band one can do some basic algebra (I love math!!) and get it going.

For instance, here’s the equation:
 
135 yds per full ball divided by 1.75 oz (in 50g) = X (where X is the unknown leftover yardage) divided by 1 oz (example weight)
 
Solving the equation for X, in this example, means there’s about 77 yds left.

And sadly, I discovered, that even with this algorithmic magic, I was not going to be able to pull it off.

SO: I decided to do what I should’ve done to begin with: get on the phone and order more yarn!

AND: get an extra ball, because now, I’m all about making some longer sleeves…

Monday Morning Mirth

If you missed the dark cool confines of escaping to the movies this weekend (what, moi?), perhaps this little detail escaped your radar…

No other Kitty Kat could run (in these boots!!) on those shiny, watery streets of Chicago like this notorious Fem Feline…