(no subject)
Sep. 21st, 2006 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIt's time for an apology. To the many thankless souls who taught me high school maths: I was wrong. I would, indeed, use the fucking stuff again later in my life. (Finance math, which also sometimes appears on my LJ, is not real math because it's made automatically fascinating by the dollar signs attached. They're like little magnets for my eyeballs or something.)
I admit that it isn't very exciting maths. I don't design steam turbines or something. Let's give the maths to you as a reading problem, since we did a shitload of those in high school maths and I thought they were dumb as shit. Nobody would ever want to know the sorts of jack-assed things that high school maths reading problems made you try to find out.
**********
You have knitted a bag out of expensive possum-and-sheep yarn. The bag, which is in entirely lame colors, was felted in the washer so that it shrunk down and tightened up. Because you are not stupid, you carefully measured the bag BEFORE and AFTER you shrunk it purposefully in the washer. There is some leftover yarn, about enough to make a felted cloche hat that would coordinate with the bag in a way that might be deemed good by the person who is going to own the bag. Since the yarn is unappealing to you, personally, you think that using it for making a coordinating hat is not a bad thing. Unfortunately, the fit of hats is not as forgiving as the sizing of bags so you can't just wing it and hope for the best.
The original, unfelted bag was 14" wide and measured 7 1/2" long over a set distance. After felting, the bag was 12 1/4" wide and measured 5 5/8" long. You would like the completed hat to measure 21 1/2" around and 7 1/2" long from crown to brim. Your knitting gauge is about 4 1/4 stitches to the inch (unfelted) and you plan to knit the hat from brim to crown because you have no idea how to pursue the crown and are hoping to be struck with inspiration before you actually get there.
How many stitches do you need to cast on?
(A) 104
(B) 120
(C) 120, decreased to 89 later on when you find out that 120 is going to make a hat big enough to fit Humpty Dumpty
(D) Give up, try knitting from crown to brim because that may be easier. It isn't.
(E) Employ trial, error, frogging, arithmatic errors, and blog posting for clearer thinking to arrive at (A)
**********
A voice from the crowd says But you're knitting, right? Don't you have a pattern for that? No. Patterns are for other people. I don't need a pattern to make a cloche hat. I've seen pictures of them. I know how they go and if I don't know how they go, I can certainly make up something appropriate.
Also, I only have one set of circular needles in whatever-the-size-is that I'm using. It's 24" and that's going to get a bit unwieldy here along about the time I get to the crown decreases. I gotta get me some bigger-gauge DPNs. Still on the subject of those who wonder what I might need for xmas, one of those things with the holes in it for telling what size one's knitting needles are might not be a bad idea. I don't have one and I could use one.
I admit that it isn't very exciting maths. I don't design steam turbines or something. Let's give the maths to you as a reading problem, since we did a shitload of those in high school maths and I thought they were dumb as shit. Nobody would ever want to know the sorts of jack-assed things that high school maths reading problems made you try to find out.
**********
You have knitted a bag out of expensive possum-and-sheep yarn. The bag, which is in entirely lame colors, was felted in the washer so that it shrunk down and tightened up. Because you are not stupid, you carefully measured the bag BEFORE and AFTER you shrunk it purposefully in the washer. There is some leftover yarn, about enough to make a felted cloche hat that would coordinate with the bag in a way that might be deemed good by the person who is going to own the bag. Since the yarn is unappealing to you, personally, you think that using it for making a coordinating hat is not a bad thing. Unfortunately, the fit of hats is not as forgiving as the sizing of bags so you can't just wing it and hope for the best.
The original, unfelted bag was 14" wide and measured 7 1/2" long over a set distance. After felting, the bag was 12 1/4" wide and measured 5 5/8" long. You would like the completed hat to measure 21 1/2" around and 7 1/2" long from crown to brim. Your knitting gauge is about 4 1/4 stitches to the inch (unfelted) and you plan to knit the hat from brim to crown because you have no idea how to pursue the crown and are hoping to be struck with inspiration before you actually get there.
How many stitches do you need to cast on?
(A) 104
(B) 120
(C) 120, decreased to 89 later on when you find out that 120 is going to make a hat big enough to fit Humpty Dumpty
(D) Give up, try knitting from crown to brim because that may be easier. It isn't.
(E) Employ trial, error, frogging, arithmatic errors, and blog posting for clearer thinking to arrive at (A)
**********
A voice from the crowd says But you're knitting, right? Don't you have a pattern for that? No. Patterns are for other people. I don't need a pattern to make a cloche hat. I've seen pictures of them. I know how they go and if I don't know how they go, I can certainly make up something appropriate.
Also, I only have one set of circular needles in whatever-the-size-is that I'm using. It's 24" and that's going to get a bit unwieldy here along about the time I get to the crown decreases. I gotta get me some bigger-gauge DPNs. Still on the subject of those who wonder what I might need for xmas, one of those things with the holes in it for telling what size one's knitting needles are might not be a bad idea. I don't have one and I could use one.
