mystical math?

Someone found my blog by googling "mystical math." Isn't that a contradiction in terms? I mean, you can worship numbers or the Five Perfect Solids if you want, but really, math is not mystical, you are. Other recent hits include "mom foot," "cool knots tied with one hand," "Japan open container laws," "random facts about the Home Depot" (????), and my favorite, "hipster dinosaur robot."


I've encountered a little problem with my EZ saddle-shouldered sweater for Dad. That problem, for once, is not gauge. My gauge is PERFECT. What is not perfect is... my laziness. I asked my mom how big my dad's chest was, and she estimated 36" and said that a 40" sweater would be fine. It's true, he's not a big guy, but my chest is bigger than that. I should've asked her to measure (and him to pretend to forget... oh, who am I kidding, this cat is 40 miles down the road from the bag and hasn't stopped running yet), because when I finally broke down (under the desperate, consuming need to know--did I do all this stockinette for nothing?) and asked him if I could measure his chest, I came up with the horrifying, terrible number of...

42.

That is two inches LARGER than my perfectly-on-gauge(-for-once) sweater, people! I may be able to block it bigger, but how much bigger? I don't want my dad walking around looking like a sweater girl! It's got to have some ease! Why did I do this to myself? WHY?

So I've put the sweater aside for now, to be rethought later, perhaps for Father's Day '09, and started on a pair of socks with some of Scout's Illini sock yarn (click on it, her photos are much better than mine!). I bought it ages ago, with my dad in mind (he and my mom met at the University of Illinois, 40 years ago this week, actually), but hadn't used it because based on what I've seen in the laundry room, all of his current socks appear to be black or dark brown. This may be an interesting experiment: will my dad actually wear anything I knit for him?





p.s. I got MAIL today: a care package from my best friend! Which she meant to send me while I was still in Japan, but hey! Snail mail is love, whenever it arrives! Included was Craft magazine, cover story Japan Style. Awww. I also got a ton of actual, frameable, non-jpg photographs and some candy corn. Which is already gone, unfortunately, or it would've made a nice addition to my very orangey photo. Check out her new baby decked out in his care-package-from-Japan bib, you guys!