A New Project

So... for all of you who have come back to check to see where our first big group tag will be... we have something to tell you.  You didn't really think we would tell you where it was, right?  You'll have to wait until after it's been done to find out the details!

KninjaNeedles8 and Knit Mama decided that they wanted to do another cooperative tag before the big group tag that will be coming up.

While driving downtown, they found the perfect location... a nice busy spot where lots of people can use to be cheered up.

The problem: There was no measuring tape in the van.

Today's lesson is how to use a nontraditional tool to measure with.

Our makeshift measuring tool:

This is a deposit envelope from a local Royal Bank that we had in the van.

This envelope was used to see how many times it would wrap around our target.  The answer... 2 and 2/3rds.

We need to be careful while measuring to see how many centimetres that is because...

As you can see... the deposit envelope is smaller than a regular letter envelope.

So.. making sure we used our original envelope, we measured:

With our tool, we measured it to be 22.5 centimetres.

And.. for you American readers... that's 9 inches

Now... time for the math!!

We need to know what 2 and 2/3rds of an envelope will measure.  Shall we add.. subtract.. multiply.. divide...???  What shall we do?

We can add or we can multiply.

KninjaNeedles8 thinks adding is easier:

22.5 cms + 22.5 cms +..???  What is 2/3rds of the 22.5 cms???

KninjaNeedles8's answer is "I don't know!"

This is where we must multiply.  To find out we can multiply 2/3rds by 22.5... the answer is 15 cms.  So now back to our original question.

22.5 cms + 22.5 cms + 15 cms = 60 cms

Our piece needs to be 60 cms around.

To do the full problem using muliplication (KnitMama's idea):

22.5 x 2.67 (the .67 is the same as 2/3rds) = 60 cms (with a tiny rounding)

So... it needs to be 60 cms (that's the same as about 23.5 inches for you Americans).

This is what we decided to do... three colours.. vertical strips.  So, we're just going to knit about 20 cms (slightly stretched) of each colour chosen and then it's ready to go!  KninjaNeedles8 figured that out (and she is correct)... but her math was so crazy to follow that we can't even write it down!!!

So we've cast on 25 stitches in a lovely neon green acrylic yarn (brand unknown) and we've begun our next piece.