Learn you must, young Padawan....

I'm not sure if you know this or not, but I studied both mechanical engineering and industrial design while at the grand University of Michigan. The point is not to gloat; it is to point out that I should be good at math. Or at least numbers, sequences - you know - stuff like that. But unfortunately, they gave me a really large fancy calculator the first day in school and all mental ability went out the window.

Depressing, I know.

Anyway, I found this pretty cool draft the other day on Handweaving.net.

Find it here!

There's something about the line sequencing that visually appeals to me. So what I failed to notice when I downloaded it is that the repeat is in units of 13. What does that mean for a weaver?

A LOT OF [expletive here] CONFUSION. 

For those of you who don't know, weaving usually involves a lot of even numbers for a variety of different reasons that I won't go into here. This particular exercise was equivalent to finding a common denominator for 3 prime numbers... Yeah. Exactly. And on top of it, I dyed my own yarn which of course didn't come out the way I thought it was going to come out. Oy!

Yellow Yarn #1. Still have to add the gray!

Love the pattern, though...

So let me pass on what I learned from this experience:

1.) When dyeing large amounts of fiber, always do small swatches first. I know, I know! That's always been rule number one for dyeing. But I was so eager to get going on this project I threw a little too much caution to the wind and ended up with an easter egg scarf. The upside? Time to do some overdyeing! Yay!

2.) Stick to even numbered drafts for the time being. Or get tips and tricks from other awesome weavers on how to do this without loosing your mind. Seriously.