I almost had a minor meltdown, knitting-related, the other night.

I cast on for my adjusted-to-work-flat version of Flugel, written out by rows with the color scheme I’d planned (6 rows white, 1 navy, 1 ribbon).   I didn’t do any fancy calculations (ie: basic math) to see if I’d have enough yarn to work the sweater, because in my head ribbon yarn alone did not equal enough yarn, but ribbon yarn used sparingly with lots of white yarn and some navy of which I have a bagful must equal enough yarn.  I didn’t even look at how much yarn the pattern required because, after all, I had a bagful.

(Let’s ignore that there was never enough white yarn for a whole sweater which is why I’d bought the navy with it, and that my new plan only used the navy for 1 row out of every 7).

So the other night I finished the ribbing, and did the first 6 rows of the sweater, and cut my yarn.  Whee!  I worked a row of navy, and cut the yarn.  Whee!  I worked a row of ribbon, and cut the yarn.  Whee!  I knit a row of white, turned, purled back…and ran out of yarn about 15 sts before the end of the row.

That was my first ball of white.  Hmm.

I checked the yardage for the 1X size of the sweater (I’m knitting the L but with the length of the 1X) and it’s roughly 1080.  I added up the yardage of the 14 balls of white that I have, and it’s 868.  Hmm.

I didn’t bother doing the precise math to see if removing the stitch count for the 2 rows of 8 that are in other yarns, and just let myself assume I don’t have enough.

Sadface.

But yesterday I came up with a plan.

Ok, I won’t have my mostly-white, kinda Parisian sweater, but I will have a sweater.

I stash-dove and found that I have another ribbon, a gold and white mix, that sorta matched.  I also had 100% cotton (dishcloth yarn) in the same gauge.  So I swatched.

First I tried using the dishcloth cotton for the middle 2 rows of every 6.

I know you can’t see a difference, but in person the white 100% cotton looks slightly yellower than the 50% cotton/50% acrylic Summer yarn.  It also looks duller and has more of a halo.  It’s passable, but I think I like the other version better.

dfdf

This is, from the bottom, an alternating 10 row repeat.  6 rows white, 1 navy, 1 blue ribbon, 2 white, then 6 navy, 1 white, 1 white/gold ribbon, 2 navy.

I like this, but think I want to break it up even more.  I just finished retyping out the pattern to be a) flat and b) with my colors written out row-by-row so I don’t have to think while knitting.  I’ve decided to go with the following repeat of colors:

That’s a 13 row repeat of 4 rows white, 1 gold ribbon, 4 white, 1 navy, 1 blue ribbon, 2 white, then the dark version 4 rows navy, 1 gold ribbon, 4 navy, 1 white, 1 gold ribbon, 2 navy, then repeat from the beginning.