Step one

It's a very important one. One that I'm not very good at doing. The first step is to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS. Step two: Read em again. I had the kid at a doctor's appointment again today. This time I wasn't going to sit in a dang office with only a 6 yr old to entertain me. Granted he was hyped up on his medication and looked like a speed freak. I brought along his sweater and trucked along. I'm doing them at the same time. I'll do a stripe on one sleeve and then do that stripe on the other one. I had read the instructions to say: Increase one stitch at the end of each 4th row until I had 72 stitches. I was like, cool beans I got this covered.

Jump ahead to a couple hours later and a couple stripes done. I'm watching a cool new show on Sci-Fi called John Doe. ohhhhh mammma that boy is hot hot hot. He was the original Dracula in the 3rd Blade movie. mmmmmm Anyways, I decided to figure out how many stripes I would have done when I had added the 32 extra stitches. Ohh..... didn't tell you I started out with 40 did I. Well I hadn't been thinking about it either. So I'm thinking, ever 2 stripes I'm getting 5 increases. So 32 divided by 5 is roughly 6 and some changes. But wait, if I'm increasing 5 stitches in every 2 rows and I need to do this 6 times, that means I'll be doing 12 stripes before doing the shoulder shaping. Did I mention that this is a kids sweater? Each stripe is like 2 1/2 inches deep. That was going to give me one looooong ass sleeve.

So I get out the instructions that I finally printed out at Mom's cause she can actually afford to buy printer ink. Me? not so much. I had to read the dang instructions like 4 times before it hit me. I am supposed to increase a stitch on each end of the 4th row. So in a 2 stripe repeat, I'm actually increasing 10 stitches. So we are talking 6 stripes plus a little into the 7th stripe. Well shit that actually matches up with where the cap shaping starts.

So I got to do a little visiting to the good ole frog pond. I wasn't pissed off or anything. I blame it on lack of sleep and being worried about the kid. Forget the fact that I actually started the increases on the first sleeve before he got real ill. lol After I get some sleep tonight, I'm going to get working on the sweater at full speed. I'm really looking forward to deciding how I'm going to deal with the shoulder. I'm thinking of adding a small band across the top to help lengthen the sweater. I didn't take in to account that the kid is pretty tall for his age. He may only be 6 1/2 but he is almost up to my mom's shoulders. Then again the woman is barely over 5' tall.

Enough about the sweater for now. I'm loosing mental cohesion. Oh, I got the magazine that my brother subscribed to for me. It's Creative Knitting. I kind of like the mag, so I'm happy. The boy did go out of his way to spoil me this year. The thing is, I already own the copy that just came. If any of y'all want the extra copy, just send me an e-mail at froddopsycho AT yahoo DOT com with Creative Knitting in the subject. Just give me your snail mail addy and I'll have the magazine off to you asap. Ok so I'm not as fast as Fedex or UPS, but I'll try to get the mag mailed out within a week of someone claiming it.

Well, hell but I've just yapped like a mad hen here. I guess that is what happens when I'm stuck home with the kid for almost a week with no outside contact. Mom doesn't really count cause we have never mastered the art of chit chat. Heck tonight she slept on the couch while I watched tv and knit. Dad was too busy spackling the walls in the basement and keeping an eye on Nick while he played on his pc.

Time for bed. Cross your fingers that I'll pass out quickly. lol