This weekend I chose to direct my attention to creating a simple cardigan design for a fair isle pattern I worked up three or four years ago, when I still lived on the eastside and didn’t work full time. This was a fulfilling exercise, since it required a complete focus on math. Can I just say here that I admire and adore the folks who created Microsoft Excel? I don’t mean Microsoft as a company– I certainly respect many parts of it, but not every aspect.   Excel, however,  is a powerful and wonderful tool in the belt of a financial analyst, on the desk of a spreadsheet addict,  or in the hands of a middle-aged knitter who simply wants to know how she’s going to knit something before she starts.

I had two goals in mind, really. First, I wanted to know how many stitches to cast on in order to approximate the size I needed and to accommodate an equal number of repeats. Second, I wanted a legitimate approximation of how much yarn of each color I should expect to use.

To accomplish these goals, I used as a template a pattern in a book that had basically the same shape as the garment I want to knit– a long cardigan with side welts at the bottom. The gauge for it was different than my gauge, and so I had to do the math. Then I counted up the stitches of each color in the repeat of the referenced pattern and got a percentage of color per pattern repeat. I looked at the amount of yarn called for in that pattern and extrapolated a range of percentages per count of skeins. For example, 1-3 % of the design would require 1 skein; 4-8% would require 2, and so forth.

To make it even more fun, the put-up for this type of yarn has changed since my reference pattern was printed, so my friend Excel did the calculations for me, including taking into account what yarn I already have, what type of put-up, and what will be required in addition to that. Et voilà*! I had a shopping list that I could send to my favorite tax-free source.  Being paranoid (that is my motto: “Be Paranoid!”) of course I added one skein to each of the twelve colors.  You never can tell.

Breathing a satisfied sigh of accomplishment, I immediately cast on and knit the bottom border while listening to poor Nate Starbucks’ latest predicament.

*This prompts me to rant about the number of people who have no clue about this word.  I see these people writing “walla!” in patterns or on blogs and it just makes me embarrassed for them.  “Walla” is one-half of the name of a particularly sweet onion from the U.S. Northwest, and one-half of the name of a city from the same area, but other than that, it is not a word.  In any language that I know.  So if you want to tell me that you’re excitedly pointing out a Walla-Walla Sweet or that you’ve been selected to receive a key to the city of Walla-Walla Washington, then by all means, say “walla!”.  But if you want to declaim to an interested party that an item is finished and said party should take a look, then say or write ”Voilà!” (complete with accent, and pronouncing the “v” like an English… “v”) which is French and means basically “see, there it is!”  And if you forget how to spell it or how to use it… just don’t try.  Use the rather pedestrian but well understood English:  “There you have it!”  Okay?  Okay.