A formula for nice numbers

I had to frog the cast on edge (again). While my second batch of calculations were for cast on numbers in multiples of 4, they weren’t for even multiples of 4. Which are nice if you want the halves of each sweater to hit the same spot in the repeat, so that (hopefully) the shoulder seam will start in the same spot in the patterning for each size, so I can use the same instructions for all of them – with only different repeat numbers. This will save lots of ink for whoever buys the pattern, and make it easier to read the instructions.

Of course, if they are mostly concerned with individual fit, all that will change anyway, but there should be plenty of margin room for penciled notes.

Nice Numbers are important. If you’ve ever coded, you may be familiar with putting a number you want to truncate to one didgit into a formula like this: integer(number/10)*10. I took the numbers for my loose sweater cast on into a formula like this for the cell of it’s Open Office Spreadsheet: =INT(number/8)*8

That way I got even multiples of 4, and just re-calculated the inches/cm of the new stitch counts for the schematic.

Of course, since each sweater has a different underarm amount, the shoulder seams may be off – but I will probably make my underarms multiple of 4 so I can force them into nice-number-ness.