Night before last, I measured my sweater and realized I was a mere four rows before where the horizontal bust dart needed to be placed. The one I had yet to do the math for and figure out how to do. The one I knew I needed but could not wrap my head around exactly where to put it because spatial things like that kick me in the rear--Sadly, geometry based maths and sciences and I are not friends; I'll stick to algebra based ones that do not require rotating objects in my head. I kept thinking I had to start higher up in the sweater because I'm working from the top-down and it didn't occur to me that regardless of direction, the dart is in the same spot because I'm essentially squeezing a bunch of rows between two existing ones. This clicked after almost a fortnight of pondering it and the placement and I was excited to get started now that this stupidly simple truth had revealed itself to me. I checked my stitch and row gauges and I was set. I started to plug the numbers in with the measurements I had taken before and everything was looking good. 3.5" deep HBD which is 26 rows on the pattern, 13 turn points. Good, good, good. I counted the stitches to get the width of the front of my sweater. 77 stitches aka 15.4". Good. I checked my "tasteful nipple distance" number, also absurdly known as "Bust point number" in more meek directions for how to do HBD. I did the math of how wide the bust dart would be from the side stitches and my magic number was....1". Giving me 5 stitches, or 10 wrap points to fit in 20 rows if I did it every single stitch. My stitch increment for wraps according to the math? 5/13.
Craaaaap.
That was not what was supposed to happen. I checked my math. I checked it again. All the numbers were right. So I went to the Bust Line group on Ravelry to get help. Confusion abounded and for about 18 hours, I could not do anymore work on my sweater because I couldn't figure the stupid bust dart out. So I made the executive decision to blow rasberries at tasteful distances and figured that if I wrapped every single stitch, I could move the narrowest part of the dart in 2 or 3 on each side to get the number of rows needed for the dart.
OK, so I was good to go again and I had 2 more rows to do before the dart needed to be started. I have to set this up by mentioning that on my sweater, I have three distinctive sets of stitch markers at work: teal ones for the side seams, an orange one for the beginning of the row, and star shaped pink ones to mark where the lace panel goes. I knit past the orange one once, and something in my brain got twitchy. I kept moving on and tried to ignore it. I passed the first teal marker and again, twitchy. I shrugged it off and kept moving. Got to the second teal marker and thought, "Man, this seems to take a long time to knit about 65 stitches for the back," and that is when it hit me.
My poor foggy mommy brain played tricks on me the night before. I did not count all the stitches on my front panel, only those 'til the orange marker. Not the side marker, the orange one. The one that my brain decided was teal.
I recounted and found an additional 40+ stitches that had not been counted and all was remedied and made sense again. So I made a bit of an ass out of myself on Ravelry for no reason at all. Yes, you may laugh.
Though I will say, all the pain was worth the results. 
See that? Like a glove. 38DDDs successfully skimmed across and my sweater shall ride up no more.
It's all smooth sailing from here.
1 comment:
Looking great so far. I could never do that. What you're talking about sounds way complicated. Yikes!
More power to you!
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