It’s all in the numbers

So Matt is working tonight and Little Man was actually asleep by 7:30 (!!!) so I thought I was going to get tons of time to work on the baby’s shawl. Last night I finished up the decreases on the first half of the panel. Tonight the plan was to do the row of yarnovers for the ribbon, finish the decreases and be done with panel one. Of course, I was delusional that it would be that easy, and I am about ready to nickname this the frogging shawl rather than the baby shawl. So the problem this time?

Do you ever get a number stuck in your head, whether it’s for a knitting pattern, appointment, address, whatever…and you are SURE it is right, until you show up at the doctors at 4:00 rather than 3:00, or knit for 8 inches rather than 6? I do this all the time, and the mistake is never in my favor. In this case, I decreased down to 171 stiches rather than 175, tried the yarnover row anyway, didn’t work, frogged back to 177 stitches, decreased again, goofed the yarnovers, frogged again, and here I am 2 and a half hours later finally with a completed yarnover row and one more row of decreases, putting me back at 173 stitches on the needles. I have to say, despite the troubles I’ve had with the shawl, I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping the love in this blanket and not getting too mad about it (which I usually do). I just need to keep reminding myself to CHECK THE PATTERN and remember that whatever number I think it is, I’m probally wrong. But the panel might still be done tonight, we’ll see how long I stay awake.

Speaking of numbers, have you ever been asked this question by your spouse/parter/SO? Last night we are sitting around listening to a knitting podcast of all things (I’ll save those for another day) and out of the blue he very casually asks me this:

“So just how much do you think you’ve spent on all your yarn and knitting stuff?”

Now, I’m not sure what made him think of this. He has been, in the three years I’ve called myself a knitter, very supportive and rarely complains about how much yarn I buy (although he doesn’t get why I always seem to need more needles. “Don’t you have needles?”). He will suggest that I try to use up some stash now and then, but that’s about it. I gave some lame answer like, “um, I really couldn’t possibly guess (sure I could, just go look in the closet upstairs) and he starts throwing out numbers, “$500?”, “$1,000?” and I’m doing a mental tally and wondering “where is he going with this?” The funny thing was he just smiled, shrugged his shoulders and dropped it as fast as he brought it up, although I do remember him mentioning some sort of tool on sale at Home Depot earlier his weekend.

When I take the time to think about how much I probably HAVE spent (and we won’t even go there, you’ve seen the closet)I realize how lucky I’ve been that he actually says so little about it. He’s the kind of guy who will make sure everyone else in the house gets what they want/need first before he takes what might be left over to buy what he needs for himself. Makes me want to ask him, “what was the tool again?”