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Maths - or, why I usually let other people do the designing

I thought I would kick the Kate Davies madness off by knitting the little tea cosy I'm basing on Kate Davies' Sheep Heid. The first time I cast on (after I remembered how to do two coloured ribbing) I calculated the numbers for the bottom of the cosy correctly, but realised it wouldn't stretch over the handle to go on.

  
The second time I got those numbers right but, when I went to knit the first patterned row I realised that I had the right number of stitches to do seven repeats of the pattern, but that would mean that one of the sheep would be partly on the left of the spout, and partly on the right. That's not nice either. Now, I can do more maths and change the numbers, either up or down. I can split two of the sheep evenly, one on the spout side and one on the handle side. What I actually did though, was go back to Epistrophy, the Kate Davies cardigan that is fully and thoroughly designed by someone else, no thought, decision or maths required by me.

That said, this isn't over yet. I will knit that mini tea cosy and it will be good.

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