Math sucks.

I finished and blocked the size 13 swatch over the weekend. Here it is pre-blocking.
I tried to crumple it up and make it look like it was a train, or flowy or something.
Which really just makes it look like a pretty mess, but that's okay.

So here it is after the blocking.

And gathered up again.

And here it is with the swatch on the size 8 needles, for contrast. Isn't that crazy? I thought that the 13 swatch looked insanely large, but compared to it the size 8 swatch looks almost dense.
I spent most of last night trying to do math and figure out how exactly the train is going to work. I'm planning to go with the two side rectangles and a train triangle idea of construction, but I'm going to knit them as one big piece. The original idea being that the train triangle would give the back fullness (and a train, duh) and it would be decreases out, until there were only the two side rectangles left at the top of the piece. I still want to use that plan, but I'm trying to figure out exactly how to work this. I want to cast on for the whole thing at once, so I think the best was to make the curvy-floor draggy part of the train is to do short rows. I want a big, long section in the Size 13's, probably about a foot deep and then do short rows to fill it the whole "floor section". Then begin the skirt proper and start doing the planned decreases on either side of the skirt train section to give it its triangular shape.

Problem - my experience with short rows is very slight and I'm not sure they'll actually work in this manner. I've done a lot of thinking about this on the subway. Guess I need to sit down and try to chart it out. Urgh. This is the situation where normally I'd just wing it. If I had the needles I'd totally be winging it right now.

But I don't have the needles.