Half Done is Well Begun

I finally got the bottom half done.

This one is going fairly slow -- since I'm knitting on as I go, I've had to frog a few triangles because I'd get almost done, and realize that I'd joined at the wrong pace, creating puckers. It was purely out of inattention.

I'm tired of small triangles, so I've decided to finish the top part in the larger triangles (the red triangles instead of the smaller black ones in the diagram). That will also emphasize, I hope, that each shape is the same, differing only in size -- the small black triangles are the same shape as the red triangles, which are the same shape as the entire large triangle.

See? Making the larger triangles on top isn't laziness, it's a design feature. My uncle ran a credit union, and he once said that his ideal employee was a conscientious lazy person, because the employee would always find the most efficient way to do anything. Here's to you, Uncle Frank!

I'm thinking of using something that is shaded, or has a color change, for the top triangles, but I'm going to have to look through my stash and see what I have. Any suggestions on the color family? The current triangles are all greeny, from celery through dark olives to blue-greens. (Why? Because I happened to have a lot of greens in my stash, that's why. And, um, efficiency, that's right, efficiency!)

So how many to cast on for each large triangle? You'll notice that the hypotenuse of a large triangle is made up of non-hypotenuses of the other triangles.

I know that A is twice B (from the original tiling description), and that the hypotenuse is 100 stitches long. So I went to a right triangle solver (this is the one I use) and I made a guess for sides A and B (d and e in my solver) of 80 and 40.

Not so good: a hypotenuse of 89, not 100.

So I tried 90 and 45. That gives me 100.6, which is essentially perfect, given that knitting is forgiving.

Were you surprised that side A (90 stitches) was so close to 100? I was. Now all I need is the yarn.