The role of arithmetic in fashion!

Over the weekend I managed to do the right front and the first sleeve - which just goes to show that I don't have much of a life!  However, I do have a sense of achievement, which is also highly desirable and not always easy to have.

When I sewed the first sleeve in, I discovered that the shaping was slightly out, but I shan't worry too much about it as I have made a generous size, and with future patterns from the same book, I shall have had a heads-up that the shaping of the sleeve head doesn't translate readily to other yarns.  Once I have washed the finished jumper, I am confident I can shape the damp garment well enough. The shaping of a sleeve head can be tricky at the best of times, and was a job I really struggled with when I was at College in the mid 60s.  Pattern drafting involves alot of mathematics and that really isn't my subject!  As a result of changing schools so often (after my father died when I was 5, we travelled alot, going wherever my mother could find live-in work) my arithmetic skills were patchy, at best, and if it hadn't been for my headmistress at my last school, Miss Conrady, I would never have understood any of it at all!  Bless her, she seemed very stiff and starchy, but there was a caring heart in that rigid bosom, and she devoted many hours of one-to-one tuition in her study to my enlightenment.  Thanks to her I managed enough understanding to cope with most of the numbers that have been thrown at me over the years, and to gain my pattern drafting qualifications (though I wouldn't trust myself to draft anything too complex these days.)

Weather permitting, I hope the next post will be of my finished jacket - weather being crucial, as I like to wash, rather than press, my finished work, and I need good, dry  and warm weather to dry the jumper!  I have never liked the result of pressing knitwear, even with the lightest touch, it tends to flatten the yarn, and, while it may look neat and professional to the eye, my experience is that the result is less comfortable in wear. Maybe it's just me, but there it is - I'm fond of doing things my own way, and don't have much time for rule books!   Like Elizabeth Zimmerman, I like to 'unvent' things (for non-Zimmerman addicts, that's her word for inventing your own way of doing things and achieving the result you want, based on your own understanding of the techniques involved, rather than doing things 'parrot fashion')

What is your passion? Do you 'unvent' things in your own life, too?