miscalculations

Things aren't nearly as far along as I had predicted - a few strategic miscalculations have seen to that. First, I overlooked the fact that the wool for my Taiga sweater is in hanks and must be rewound into balls before knitting. Doing it by hand, stretching the hanks around two chair backs takes a bit of time.

And then there's the cast on. Using the long tail method, I pulled a length of wool from the ball, started with my slip knot and then added stitches. On my first attempt, the tail wasn't nearly long enough - I ran out at 72 stitches. On my second try I got as far as 180 stitches , but still not enough tail. Third time was the charm. Although I was so frustrated that I erred on the side of caution and was left with a couple yards extra on the tail with 224 stitches on the needle.

This happens to me more often than not and it's got me thinking ... I should be able to predict how much yarn is needed for the tail. Today I'm going to work on a formula ... [(number of stitches) x (diameter of needle x π) x (1.10 or some sort of ease factor)]+ (extra tail for weaving in). Really, isn't this what all my math studies were leading up to?