Numerology

To be good at knitting you need to be a good counter. You count rows, stitches, decreases and increases, stitch wraps and pattern reps. For a long time now I've used a little golf score counter to keep track of increases and decreases; I can keep all the other stuff going in my head with no problem. (I also have a superpower: I can tally up the cost of everything in my cart at the Shoprite - less coupon savings - and come within a dollar of the total cost at checkout. Even figuring tax! It's true.)

On Saturday I consummated the love affair with golf by playing a full 18 holes at Weequahic Golf Course in Newark and there was a lot of sweating, counting and furious adding. Like your first time with anything there were a lot things that surprised me: first of all, a golf course is big; men have to work a little harder because where they tee off can be as much as a 100 yards longer than the tee for "ladies"; and my ability to count stiches and add up the price of beans became a valuable skill as my score climbed ever higher. I was also tremendously pleased with one par on the second hole and my sad but hard won score: 158.

As I dozed in the car over the Pulaski Skyway, I wondered if you could use your scores to plot a knitting pattern, either as stripes or stitch changes based on what you got at each hole, or how much of a difference there was between your score and par. Lots of scarf patterns are based on math concepts like Fibonacci sequences or moibius patterns or even replicating DNA. I have been experimenting with some stranding so as to use up the shocking amount of stash and I think I will embark on an actual knitted garment for me, a cardigan that I can wear when we play golf in the fall.

You could even add up the numbers like in the Cosmo Bedside Astrologer to come up some fortune telling activity. If you add up the numbers in my score you get 5, and if you check out that numerology link, you learn that I am "communicative and witty on a light level" which might explain why I find the Three Stooges so hilarious. Nyuk!

Brendan finished the game with a personal best score of 93. He also got 4 pars, more than in any game. Two in a row on holes 5 and 6. I will be sure to give him back the score card for the archives.