Knitting my third sleeve...

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

Well, since it seems like I've been knitting on one striped sleeve or another FOREVER, I decided to figure out what has more stitches: A sleeve, or a hood?
This is something I did NOT figure out very precisely, so it includes no allowances for hood shaping, nor for the ten or so rows in which I wasn't decreasing on the sleeve, so the numbers have a small amount of error built in. (Sorry Jennifer...)

I calculated the hood stitches by multiplying number of rows times number of stitches per row (in the main section of the hood, after all shaping in the neck area was done), and the hood has roughly 9765 stitches in it.

I calculated the sleeve stitches by treating each of them as a trapezoid, so multiplied the number of rows by one half the sum of (the number of stitches at the top of the sleeve plus the number of stitches at the bottom of the sleeve), and so each sleeve has roughly 7320 stitches. This number is LESS THAN the number of stitches in a hood, which surprised me. I mean, I know there are a lot of stitches in the hood, because it took me longer than I thought it would to knit the hood. However, it didn't occur to me that there would be MORE STITCHES THAN IN A SLEEVE!!!!!!

And so, my world now has one fewer mysteries in it, and I am fully aware of why it "feels" to me like I've been knitting sleeves for A LONGER AMOUNT OF TIME THAN THIS SHOULD BE TAKING!! Sorry for the shouting. Please give me a break! I'm on my third striped sleeve, here! Anyway, I'm about a third of the way to the end of this sleeve, and then I'm not going to knit any more on this sweater. I'll just have to weave in the ends, block it, and rejoice that I (hopefully) finished it prior to its deadline in early July.

In other news, I've been stalking my mailbox for the past two weeks, and have just received the summer issue of Cast On. I'm never really in love with the Spring and Summer knitting magazines, and this one is no exception.

Finally, our van has been dying on me, but not all the time, just maybe 8 percent of the time, though so far I've been able to get it started again, so we're taking it to be looked at on Friday, to try to figure out what is going on. The man at the fix-it place said the hardest part might be to get it to malfunction so that they can see what's actually happening. Well, it malfunctions just fine when I am at a stop light in two lanes of traffic with a string of cars behind me. Anyway, of course we have plans to go on a little trip on Monday, so anybody want to place bets on whether or not the van will be fixed by Friday at the end of the day? We're going to celebrate my niece's 11th birthday, so by then I'll try to turn this fleece:
into a cute little reversible vest. I learned how to make it at a class I took at the Sewing Expo two weeks ago, and I'm anxious to try it out. My four year old picked out the fabrics. I think he did a great job. I'll let you know if I can figure it out.....

In any case, with the van a little bit, er, unreliable right now, I might be taking the bus for a few days (which I should really try to do more often, anyway), which means I have to line up some really portable knitting. The sweater shown in this post is just becoming too big to cart around on the bus, and the sock I'm working on is a bit intense, requiring a cable needle in addition to the four double pointed needles I'm always dropping, so there is a chance I'll be starting a new sweater in the next day or two. I think I have it narrowed down to either this (with added side shaping, revised gauge, revised sleeves, made out of yarn I'm going to recycle from a sweater I made 20 years ago) or this (with neckline revised, possible waist shaping added, made out of some nice Cascade 220 in my stash). Any thoughts on either one of these?

I'm trying to think of seven (for one meme) or eight (for another meme) things about myself, and when I do, I'll post the results. Hmmm.... I think I've already mentioned that my cooking is "adequate" (though last night I made the fishiest fish I've ever had -- is it my fault, or the fish's?). I'll try to come up with something more in line with the spirit of the memes in the next few days..... These things take time, you know.....

More soon!
Warm regards,
Laura (YarnThrower)