Never ever try to do math, even simple math, when you are tired.

Case in point. I measured; I swatched for yoke sweater. All good. 8 sts to 2″. Easy. Just plug that number there into the EPS worksheet. Yup. Plug it in. Okay, pull out the calculator and see how many stitches to cast on. Hmm. 289 sts. Odd number because I wanted a non-thinking seed stitch edging. Just plain old knit/purl all the way around. No need to do anything different at the end/beginning of each round. Easy peasy. I’m so clever.

That should have been my first clue. 289 stitches. I cast on using a needle 2 sizes larger because I’m heeding Janine‘s advice of creating more of a bell shape by using larger needle sizes near the hips and shift down to the correct needle size for gauge for the body.  No complicated math for determining K’ (dubbed K-prime — secondary K number) and then figuring out the decreases back down to my K number. I knitted a few rounds. All the while, thinking, dang! That’s a lot of stitches. I knit on. There appears to be quite a bit of extra fabric here. Hmm. I knit on. Finally, after 3-4 rows, I go to bed.

This morning. I took a look at it. There does seem to be a lot of extra fabric. I did a quick measurement. 3.5 sts/in. That doesn’t seem too far from my 4 sts/in of the original gauge. As a matter of fact, it should provide the ease I wanted around the hips. I plugged it into the calculator. 82.5″. What? I double check. Yup. 82.5″. How could I have gone so wrong?

I looked back at my notes. Yup. 8 sts/2 in. My brain figured out that this is 4 sts/in, but I plugged the darn 8 into the worksheet instead of 4.

Moral of this story? Don’t do math, especially simple math, when you are tired. I can’t even blame alcohol since I didn’t have any. Just plain old exhaustion. Maybe alcohol would have helped.

Okay. got to get back to casting on 145 sts. A much more sane number of stitches. Although 144 pleases me better (12 squared), but I still want the brainless seed stitch edging. But 145 is better than 143, because it’s divisible by 5. Yes, there’s a little bit of Monk in me.