Math for short rows

I've posted the general math for short row shaping on my blog. If you have any questions, just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

For Mermaid, just turn the shaping 90 degrees, so that you're adding stitches for length and adding rows for width. I won't discuss adding stitches for length here. For Mermaid, there's also the additional complication of the striping pattern. Luckily, that's not hard to work with. Just split up the colour of your short rows to more-or-less hide within the stripes (one stripe ridge, one short row ridge -- put in more short row stripes per stripe if needed).

There's another option that makes the bust dart (or at least part of it) decorative. There is a conveniently placed two-ridge stripe from the top of the gusset (colour C). Take the style of shaping in the hourglass-shaped diagram from my math post, invert it, and embed it all into the blue stripe. Start off with short rows of a stich or three, make your short rows longer and longer until you reach the midpoint, then reverse the shaping to make the other side of the dart. This may not turn out looking as "jacket-like" as some might like, because it'll make a bit of a cone shape to make room for your breast.

Does this make sense to people? Because everyone will need to add different numbers of stitches for length and different numbers of short rows for width, everyone will make slightly different tweaks to the pattern, so I haven't worked out the numbers here. If people ask really nicely, I could do a worked example for my measurements or be bribed with socks or something to tweak the pattern for them.