Vest progress! and more inventory calculations

Knitting

Okay! The vest is coming along. This is the one from Ann McCauley's new Together or Separate, which Ann made in a nice white. The light doesn't show the yarn well in this photo, but I love the drama of the sunbeams and shadows. Even though this is predominantly ribbing, I've blocked it out pretty hard. It'll spring back: the yarn is Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride, and it will spring back. . . .

It's uncharacteristic of me, but I think I have made almost no modifications in this pattern. (Oh. Except for knitting all the pieces back-and-forth in one, instead of as separate fronts and back.)

Inventory

The software here burped a few weeks ago and lost all my inventory files, five years' worth. I've been working on reestablishing at least this year's inventory counts, from 12/31/07 forward. The rest is kind of history, but we're heading toward the end of the year and some of my taxes are based on the amount of inventory I have. I avoided all businesses involving inventory for a very long time, but I like books too much and ended up publishing some and here I am, working on inventory counts.

I put the relevant papers into colorful folders to make the task less onerous. Can you imagine if they were gray?

This is challenging enough work even when there are yellow folders involved.

One of my major sales channels changed its software this year (a huge deal, which went amazingly smoothly) and the numbers from the new and old systems don't agree with each other. Sigh. (Maybe it didn't go quite as smoothly as it appeared to.)

Isn't publishing an exciting career choice? Although I'm not at all sure I chose it. I think it came and bushwhacked me.

Comments

[gayle]

That vest is going to be amazing! I like to knit pieces all-in-one, too. Saves trying to match things up. (I always knit sleeves at the same time, clipping them together with safety pins as I go. That way if I'm a row late on increases or decreases, at least the two sleeves remain consistent - without driving myself crazy keeping notes...)

Maybe you should have mixed in some red and orange folders, too. Then you could imagine the whole pile blazing as a bonfire. It's the little things that keep us going.

[Linda Cunningham]

Count me in as another "would rather knit all in one piece than seam" person -- I find it resolves a lot of shaping and gauge issues as well.

The big downside is that it seems to take forever to get a row done sometimes, but I think it's a more than reasonable trade-off. One of the first vests I knit by myself as a teenager I converted from three pieces to one, and I still wear it, as it keeps coming back into "style."

:-)

[Deborah Robson]

It seemed like the LONGEST rows on the vest were the ones in the collar (and upper front sections; they're combined)! When I'm knitting in the round, the rounds don't seem as long because I just keep going. Back and forth is a little more noticeable. Nonetheless, I'm not going to seam anything i don't have to (or spend brain cells thinking about keeping patterns lined up).

Ann has better reasons for doing her designs in pieces than most people, and I've found some of her designs slightly more tricky to convert to seamless than most. I still resist and make anything I knit as one-piece as possible! Her results are a bit "snappier" when finished than mine are. My style is also a bit more casual than hers, so it all works out fine.
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I like the idea of red, orange, and yellow folders: warming. Especially good for the winter around here, with the office in the basement. I have red and yellow in play. Maybe I'll think of a reason to use orange.