20
Jan
2014

How many stitches are in a shawl anyway?

I thought it’d be interesting to calculating the number of stitches  in the last shawl FO I posted about (dang it’s been awhile since I posted a shawly FO.)

DSC_6137-1

Lapidarius was a basic rectangular shawl with:
67 stitches per row
48 rows per repeat
12 repeats in the shawl
1 set up row
and 6 border rows on either end.

So:
(6 border rows) + (6 border rows) + (1 set up row) = 13 border rows
(48 rows per repeat) x (12 repeats in the shawl) = 576 patterned rows
(576 rows in the patterned section) + (13 border rows) = 589 rows total
(589 rows total) x (67 stitches per row) = 39,463 stitches total (damn!)

I was expecting a lot of stitches, but certainly not that many! I was expecting maybe a couple thousand, but not almost 40,000 stitches for a (relatively) small shawl!

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go pick my jaw off the ground.

(Have I done my math wrong? Is it actually 40,000?)

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