Hey! Look Over There!

I'm distracting you, so I can grab one of your french fries when you're not looking.

Look! Jam! Jam-o-rama Jam! Jimmy Jammy Jam Hands!



There's strawberry, strawberry-raspberry, raspberry-apricot, and apricot. And the strawberries and raspberries were picked by Nora over on Sauvie Island.

Despite the fact that it was hot (Nora. That's hot. Too hot to touch. Did I mention it was hot?), we both tasted the stuff that wouldn't fit in jars, and can attest to the deliciousness of the jam (now no longer hot, but it was hot).

Can I distract you further?



Jake! Look! A sunbeam! A warm (but not hot) sunbeam! Jake! Look over there! Jam!

Now that you're sufficiently distracted, I can tell you (quietly) that I'm going to have to rip out about 24 rounds of the Green Gable. And I'm going to have to (somehow) manage to get all 240-something stitches back on the needle. Why? Who the hell knows.

I know I changed the pattern, but I also know that my math on this one was absolutely correct. The waist decreases in the original pattern happen like this: knit 6 inches after the armpit, then decrease 2 sts per row every third row 7 times. This means 21 rows, with 2 decreases every third row. And in the pattern, that means 3 inches-worth of rows. Fine. I can do that math.

I need to decrease 6 inches of circumference from chest to waist, or 36 stitches. I get 9 rows to the inch, so if I want to do my decreases in the same place as in the original, that means I have 27 rows (3 inches). And lookie there! 27 divided by 3 is 9, so I can do 9 decrease rows, and also, 9 goes into 36 4 times, so I should decrease 4 stitches every third row. And I can pair them at the underarm, and this should work.

EXCEPT that when I execute this really (I must say) very well-formed plan, I get decreases so sever that it looks like my sweater is a very wide sock toe. As far as I can tell, my chest-to-waist ratio isn't too far from the norm, but my body certainly doesn't come to a point about 6 inches below my armpit, and then angle in precipitously. But then, we don't have a full length mirror at home, so I could be wrong about that.

Look! Jam!