Okay, we are going to get this out of the way quickly! As much as we do not like to, if we are going to knit something from a commercial pattern, and expect a predictable outcome, we gotta get gauge. That means that you need to use a wool and needles that will match the gauge requirement of the pattern. Now, in 9 years I have heard a ton of knitters say”Oh I never knit a swatch and I always am dead on gauge” Okay, thats nice. But, the rest of us need to knit swatches and not let our knitting be such a crap shoot.I must admit that I will short cut here(Jean do not listen, I never did it in your classes) and there. A sleeve is a fabulous swatch, if you hit gauge, you are already several inches to the good and if not, it just does not seem that the time has been wasted. (Run a life line in the row/round above the ribbing so you can pick it up alittle more easily) Now for some simple gauge rules which was the whole reason for this post-(see what happens when I get on the soapbox?) 1- swatch the same way that you are going to knit- so if you are going to knit in the round-swatch in the round, knit back and forth-swatch back and forth. 2-work a significant piece- it is almot impossible to get an accurate reading off of 2 square inches- I usually knit at least 5 by 5 inches and then wash it, dry it, lay it flat and measure it.3- Use the swatch instuctions that the designer has suggested- so if the designer has swatched in pattern, you must swatch in pattern(I do not understand why they cannot knit a stocking stitch swatch to make out life easier but apparently some feel that complication of knitting is good for us)One good thing that does come of swatching in pattern, is to ensure that the wool fulfills our expectations ,and your hard worked,very complicated cables do not collapse when they hit the water-trust me on this one.( it was a total collapse ,can you imagine how pissed I w ould have been ,had I knit the whole sweater just to have the cables turn into mush)) 4- measure the number of stitches over 4 inches and do not cheat-even a little bit-get a calculator, do the math -divide the number of stitches by 4 and this will give you stitches per inch. You gotta get gauge- a quarter stitch does not seem like it will do much harm but trust me on this one- the difference on a full sweater is significant. Do you want it to fit or not!
So , now we get to the nitty-gritty of the subject- when you didn’t get gauge- how do you fix it? If you have too many stitches in an inch you need to make them larger(the stitches),so that there are less stitches-use a bigger needle and when there are not enough stitches use a smaller needle to that the stitches will be smaller and more will fit in. When you find that you have “got gauge” make sure that the work still has a pleasent feel to it. It is a bit of a problem to end up with gauge but the knitted product is as stiff as a suit of armour(wool is toheavy for the needles) or so flimsy(wool not heavy enough for the needles) that it would only be suitable for night wear( Unless that is the look you are aiming for in which case….Hurray! )
The backof the ball bands is a wealth of information, check it out , ask questions in the wool store. We are happy to intrepret the stuff on the packaging. I’ll run through it on a future blog as well. Thats it for now- in the mean time- What are you knitting right now? I am 2 sleeves short of a full Cowichan (needs to be done soon as my sweetie has requested it for his night at Olympic hocky)- Go Canada Go-Later
