Halfway on the Prime Factorization Blanket!

I’m halfway finished with my new niece’s Prime Factorization Blanket!

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it doesn’t look like I’m going to finish before Arianna arrives. But the good thing about a blanket is that it doesn’t have a size, right?

I actually finished up to 49 a week ago. I did not take a picture and report my progress. And then — when I started on the next row and began knitting 50 — I discovered I had used the wrong color when I knitted 40! I had used the color for 3 in place of the color for 5! *shudder*

(Those who need to be brought up to speed, I explain the blanket in previous Prime Factorization posts.) 40 should be 2 x 2 x 2 x 5, so the square was divided into four sections, with three of them the color for 2 (blue), and one the color for 5 (green). But, horror of horrors, I had used the color for 3 (yellow)! And I didn’t even discover it until I after I had knitted 50 = 2 x 5 x 5, also using yellow when I should have been using green! Yikes! But then I was getting ready to start on 51 = 3 x 17, and then it dawned on me that the color for 3 is yellow, so it is NOT the color for 5, and I’d been doing it wrong!

Fortunately, it was on the end of the row, and relatively easy to fix. I took out the knitting I’d done on 50, undid the last white square in the row, and then undid just the yellow section I’d put on the top of 40. I replaced it with green, knitted the white square back, and then started up on 50.

But I’ve decided that taking a picture after each row and *checking* the numbers carefully is a good idea!

I did discover a mistake when I finished knitting my prime factorization sweater. I think it was in the rectangle for 48. But 48 has five factors, and in that piece of knitting the factor for three only was about four stitches. So I was able to pick them out and put in the correct color with a crochet hook! It would not be so easy to do on this blanket, so I am going to have to be more vigilant!

My posts on Mathematical Knitting and related topics are now gathered at Sonderknitting.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *