Doing the Math
It’s time to face the music. Something is Rotten in the Tstate of Tsockdom.
Actually, I’m not 100% convinced it IS the math. I read the Yarn Harlot, after all. I am thoroughly and empirically familiar with the perpetual struggle against the space/time continuum. I dunno; maybe I should have read this post with a little more empathy and a touch less hubris. Who was I to think all my swatching and measuring and calculating and scribbling would protect me? If Something Out There is twisting the Laws of Time and Gauge, why should I be exempt?
I don’t know if it’s something in the air; I don’t know if I’ve jinxed myself; I don’t know if what I’m up against is encroaching senility or rampant inefficiency or WHAT. All I know is, something doesn’t add up.
Case Study #1 - Spatial: Swan Lake
Yes, I know, we’ve been through all this. Measured. Swatched. Test-felted. Measured again. Swatched some more. Rinsed. Repeated. Calculated. Made notes. Remembered previous felting exercises and placed confidence in same.
(See? Plenty of swatches.)
But it wasn’t enough. This
(See? Lots of scribbled notes.)
ain’t gonna cut it. Not this time.
No, I’m still not absolutely positive. But I can’t make the leap of faith any more. That old combination of experience and gut tells me that this
(See? It’s Yeti Time.)
is just TOO big to work. It ain’t gonna shrink enough, not if I was to run it through fifty industrial-strength diaper-washers.
I need a big load of extra mojo here. I’m going to Do It Right.
(See? Lots of professional-looking measurement call-outs.)
I’m going to re-measure and re-calculate. I’m going to chart this thing to within an inch of its miserable life. I will not flinch; I will not cut myself an iota of slack. No fudging, not even for a single stitch or the shortest of rows. And when I’m done, it’s dollars to doughnuts we’ll be looking at a pretty deep plunge in the frog pond. Sigh. It’s not easy being green.
And still I will not flinch. I will frog with gay abandon; I will wind with consummate care; I will re-weigh and re-label and re-document every piece of yarn; I will start afresh.
I know that even this may not be enough to appease Whatever Is Out There messing with the laws of the knitting universe. But at least I will have tried; will have taken my lumps and made my sacrifice; will have submitted voluntarily (if wistfully) to the cleansing flames.
Case Study #2 - Temporal: Kitri
I’m horribly afraid I have to start facing reality here too. (This would be easier if reality would just stand still for a freakin’ minute.) I seem to remember that in my carefree salad days I was perfectly, indeed routinely, capable of stuffing 20 gallons of work into a 2-gallon chunk of time. By that formula, if it were still available to me, I would now be able to keep threading beads for Kitri kits while simultaneously recalculating and re-knitting Swan Lake AND knitting up Cleopatra AND documenting both AND printing up and assembling all the patterns to be sent out for pending and anticipated orders. (What? Did I hear someone mention laundry and planning meals and cooking and finding a new vet for the dog and taking him to same? Or sleeping? No? Just as well.)
But those days are evidently gone, and so here again something just isn’t adding up.
See, when Jennifer and I began discussing Kitri in the first place, we had no plans for it (or any of its sister socks) beyond “wouldn’t it be cool to sell a few kits at Rhinebeck.” Even then it seemed perhaps just a tad quixotic of me to volunteer to pre-bead all the laceweight for said kits, but I figured that by the time I counted out all the beads, with 10% overage or so, and put them all into tiny bags, and organized all the… well, anyway, I figured I might as well just string them all and be done with it. Logical, right? Seemed like a good idea at the time.
And who knew it was gonna take off and fly, so far, so fast???? (AGAIN, NOT COMPLAINING! NEVER! WAY BEYOND THRILLED ABOUT THAT PART.) I hate like poison to feel that I’m letting people down, but a lifetime of pre-beading was never intended to be in the cards for this one. Not by me, anyway. (Wait a minute; Stephanie covered this too, didn’t she, and not so long ago. Something about - what was that concept? Oh, yeah. Conceive-PLAN-Execute. Yeah. Right. And I read that post and, fool that I am, I posted a comment in which I blasphemed against Planning. Yes, I’d say I definitely need to do something about my hubris problem.)
Look, you saw the bead layout for Kitri yesterday. Let me hasten to assure you that stringing the beads for ONE pair of Kitri socks is no big deal. A walk in the park, in fact. Stringing the beads for HALF A DOZEN pairs of Kitri socks - still pretty much a walk in the park, if also a bit of a crick in the neck.
It’s once you start getting into the double digits - and beyond - that the 16-ton anvil starts to descend on your devoted head. The eyes blur. The hours crawl. The shoulders spasm. I’ve gone and got me a beading board or three, and a set of little bead jars, and a bunch of big-eye needles, and some powerful reading glasses, and a considerable amount of practice, and I’ve gotten to where I can do a set in half an hour. Pretty good. And then just when I’m patting myself on the head for this, along comes Jennifer and says she needs 50 more of them, please. Yesterday, please.
You do the math.
January 11th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Oh, my stars! Oh, my fur and whiskers! Kermit, the Green Yeti, lives. And I thought Hagrid was knitting his own socks! That picture! My sides ache. I haven’t laughed so hard in eons. And then the beading! I got an order like that once (50) from something I wore into a shop. I walked out and never went back. But your planets are definitely up to something. Even Mercury in retrograde pales in comparison. So I say throw them in little baggies, type out the instructions–or the name of the book at Barnes & Noble or Amazon–and bale, for heaven’s sake. The first 50 (or whatever number you have already finished) get the prize for ordering early, and that is it. It won’t be the first time. People LOVE those socks! They are not buying them because the beads are already strung. If you hadn’t told them, they wouldn’t even be expecting it. I wasn’t. I was really surprised to see that the beads came already strung. One look at that beading board and I knew you were doomed. None of us had any idea! But remember, knitters can’t wait to get and start on their new projects. And most knitters like to grow and advance and learn new techniques. That is why they keep ordering fancier and fancier patterns and kits. We are an understanding lot, too. And from what I have read and seen, most knitters lead pretty swamped lives themselves. All your designs are sensational, unique and of superb quality, and each has a following. You are a true artist; you have high standards and a big heart; you wanted to offer your customers more; you tried to do a very nice thing, and your first customers benefitted. NO MORE. Same price; first came, first got lucky. Happens all the time. After all, you have apologized very nicely in your blog. Tuck a PRINTED-OUT note inside the rest of the orders, and get some sleep. “Sorry, George, but business is business.” Or maybe something a bit softer.
And I haven’t even ordered mine yet. Good thing, or I’d have to feel guilty.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:02 am
I’m behind on blog-reading and e-mailing and lots of stuff.
I received my Kitri kit last week (I think) and LOVE IT!! Thank you so much! It’s all I can to do to keep from starting it, yesterday.
And I love that the beads are strung, but woman, get a grip. I didn’t realize the designer was stringing the beads. If you are stringing beads until you are blind, you can’t be designing wonderful new socks for us to knit. Theresa is right. You have to stop. Either change the kits or hire someone to do that for you so you can do what no one else can do. Really. Sorry to be so bossy, but it needs to be said.
And I do feel guilty. A little. But I’ll just be grateful and more appreciative than I was before.