{"id":814,"date":"2011-08-29T23:16:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T06:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/?p=814"},"modified":"2011-08-29T23:16:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T06:16:24","slug":"never-underestimate-the-importance-of-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/?p=814","title":{"rendered":"Never Underestimate the Importance of Counting"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in first grade, we had a unit on learning to count.\u00a0 We’re not talking just one through ten, either – oh no, we were graded on whether we could recite, in front of the entire class, the numbers from one to one hundred.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t sound so hard now, but at the time…terrifying.\u00a0 I was a shy little Asian girl in a really, really white elementary school with a racist teacher who thought I had Down’s Syndrome (and then yelled at me when I did better than the other kids).\u00a0 Getting up in front of everyone scared the living snot out of me.<\/p>\n

Also, I had trouble with the eighties.\u00a0 To this day, I’m always a little cautious about counting past seventy-nine.\u00a0 I’ll pause for a moment, think really hard, and cautiously go with, “eighty? Eighty-one…”<\/p>\n

The other day, one of my friends and I were arguing about counting in base-ten vs. base-two, and he commented that “No one has trouble counting!\u00a0 It’s an inherent human trait!\u00a0 Who could possibly have trouble counting?!”<\/p>\n

At which point I raised my hand, and I swear I lost like three whole Respect Points\u2122 in that moment.<\/p>\n

Anyway<\/em>, all of that was a really long way of explaining why when I suddenly realized that I’d recently finished knitting a few more squares for Wedding Blanket II, and was well into yet another, but I hadn’t actually counted my progress in a long time, I felt a moment of panic.\u00a0 In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d counted my progress.<\/p>\n

I’m sure if I went back in the archives, it would be on this blog, but…er…I’m inefficiently lazy.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I dug out all the squares for the blanket, starting with the most recent additions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I…er…might<\/em> have a habit of making small little bundles as I finish each one.\u00a0 It serves absolutely no purpose, but it tends to make me happy and that’s all that matters, right?<\/p>\n

Anyway, I unfolded those and laid them out on the stack with the rest of them and started counting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That, my friends, is thirteen whole blocks for this blanket.\u00a0 I think that means that if I’d wanted to bail at a 3×4 block blanket, I missed.<\/p>\n

However, luckily, I was planning to knit a 4×4 block blanket, so I’m still good to go.\u00a0 I mean, sure, in the back of my head was the thought that I had an escape route planned if it became too much, and the recipients would never know… (Except now they would, and I think I’ve mentioned the plan for 16 blocks before, so that was really more of a fairy tale I told myself.)\u00a0 Just three more squares, and I can start the border for this thing.<\/p>\n

Anyone have a good idea for a border to go with this one?\u00a0 You know, without me showing you what the blanket actually looks like, because I have to somewhat hide it from the newly created husband-and-wife duo it’s intended for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in first grade, we had a unit on learning to count.\u00a0 We’re not talking just one through ten, either – oh no, we were graded on whether we could recite, in front of the entire class, the numbers from one to one hundred. It doesn’t sound so hard now, but at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,37],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-counting","tag-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}