Gauge Archives - Tinking Turtle

Lee Wittenstein: Getting Gauge is Making me Tense

April 21, 2013 by Jennifer Raymond

This isn’t the first time Lee Wittenstein has visited this blog. Creative brain behind Harper & Figg, she’s created some stunning patterns! Today, she’ll be talking about an important subject to any knitter: Gauge.

I’ll let her take it away from here:

Go on, admit it.
You know who you are. Yes, you in
the back corner. You don’t always knit a
gauge swatch. Oh, I know. There are some
of you thinking, “What’s the big deal? I always get gauge.” Well, bless your hearts! After many years of knitting and working in
yarn stores I know that there are others of us who do not “always” get
gauge. And the knitting gods have
punishments in store if you think you do.
Eventually it will catch up with you. So our first lesson is, knit a gauge swatch.

Even when you do knit a swatch you can have
problems. I have been thinking of this ever since a problem with a pair of mittens–Pinion
from Brooklyn. These are knitted
sideways, so a mistake in gauge means that the mitten is too long and you can’t
just frog back and shorten it. I knit a
gauge swatch and I did the first mitten correctly. And then I knit a second one, defeating
second mitten syndrome. I used the same yarn, needles and pattern. But my gauge changed. Not a lot, but enough to make the second
mitten longer than the first. The lesson here–even if you knit a swatch and
got gauge, even if you knit a whole mitten and got gauge–keep checking your gauge.

So along comes LightWaves–a small shawl originally
designed to be knit with worsted-weight yarn.
Now, shawls and cowls are among my favorite things to knit for many
reasons but one of them is that gauge is usually a non-issue. Substitute yarn to your heart’s content and,
as long as you like the fabric you are making, you can always knit it a little
longer or a little shorter and voila! I
wanted to use Noro Silk Garden(NSG) for part of my shawl and a coordinating
solid yarn for the rest.

Reader, I made mistakes. The first one–I didn’t
knit a gauge swatch. In my memory NSG was a light worsted weight yarn. I dug into the stash and found a skein of an
alpaca/wool blend–a light DK weight. Perfect.
I knit blithely along until it was time to add the NSG. (Insert the sound of squealing brakes.) The Silk Garden was way too heavy. So I checked the gauge of NSG—4.5 st/inch. Back to the stash, another yarn. This time I read the label—4.5 st/inch. So I cast on but not for a swatch, for the
whole shawl. Not until a customer at my
LYS said, “That looks kinda stiff for a shawl,” did I realize that to get a
good drapey fabric I would have to knit this yarn at 4 st/inch or even more.
Not a good match for NSG. So the third lesson– read the label and swatch anyway.

To shorten this already very long story, the third
try was a charm. The little shawl is finished and lovely and just what I wanted
it to be. And I think that all the gauge
rules can be summed up in two words–pay
attention. Read the label, swatch, check your gauge often as you knit. This should take care of most problems. But don’t say that out loud. The knitting gods are always listening.

Check out Lee and her patterns at www.harperandfigg.com.

Gauge, and Shaping

March 21, 2011 by Jennifer Raymond

Dear Yarnies,

So you have this great pattern. You’ve got the perfect yarn for it, and your gauge is spot on. You stitch it, either in crochet or knitting, exactly as it says. And yet, it doesn’t fit the way you want it to when you’re done. You look at the model and you realize that well, she’s a bit more endowed than you in the bust, and a bit less gifted in the hips. It occurs to you that MIGHT be the reason why the darn thing rides up in the hips and bags around your armpits.

Well, I’m here to tell you something.

That can be avoided. Remember how I was talking to you about Gauge? Well, your gauge can really help you when working on that sweater.

You see, your gauge tells you how many stitches you get per inch. Think of it as a ratio. (I know, we’re getting back to some math from long ago, but bear with me). Say you get 10 stitches in an inch. You have a sweater pattern that has you knitting 30 inches around your bust, so you should have 300 stitches around your bust. But your waist is only 25 inches around. that means going from your bust to your waist you have to somehow decrease to 250 stitches.

You could do those decreases gradually, or you could do them all at once. (Most people choose to do them gradually, or it would cause ripples in your knitting. But if you want ripples, do those decreases all at once.)

Then, your hips are 35 inches around. So from your waist to your hips you need to increase 100 stitches.

In it’s most simple form, that is what shaping is. Now, you can get complicated by then figuring out that in between your bust and your waist you have 5inches, and you need to decrease 50 stitches. So you can figure that each inch your decreasing 10 stitches. You get 5 rows to the inch, so each row your decreasing by 2 stitches.

Do the same type of math for your waist to your hips.

The same thing would work for crochet.

So, Yarnies, make your gauge work for you, so you can have stunning pieces of work to show me!

Until later,
Jen

So, let’s talk about Gauge

March 18, 2011 by Jennifer Raymond

Dearest Yarnies,

As you all probably know, I started off as a crochet-person (I always find that crocheter looks a little odd to me, but there’s not a better way of writing it, I suppose). I came to knitting when I crochet a pair of socks, and wore them to death. I was much disappointed when I tried to darn then, because most of the ways to darn socks are for knitting. I resolved then and there that I was going to knit my next pair of socks, so that I could darn then when they wore out.

Yes, I know. Crazy reason to start knitting, but then, there you go.

It was around this time that I began to realize that knitting, and crochet seem to involve a more math than I was willing to admit. Now I embrace it, but as an English major, I found this offensive to my creative soul.

And so, I rejected one of the most valuable tools in a crafter’s arsenal.

The Gauge Swatch.

Now, for those of you who do ~~knot~~ not know what a Gague Swatch, it’s a small piece of knitting or crochet that you make before you make the big project. The advantage is this: you can figure out what needle you need to pair with the yarn (to get a tighter or looser fabric). You can also find out how many stitches you get per inch, which is a very important piece of information to know.

Your gauge works like this:

Thicker yarn with a larger needle = less stitches to the inch
Thinner yarn with a smaller needle = more stitches to the inch

Typically, on a ball band, there will be a recommended needle size that goes with the yarn, and the ball band on the yarn will tell you how many stitches you will get, approximately, if you use that yarn with the needle they recommend.

Thicker yarn with a smaller needle = less stitches to the inch and a tighter fabric (socks or washcloths)
Thinner yarn with a larger needle = more stitches to the inch and a looser fabric (lace or a drapey fabric)

Now, other things can influence the quality of your fabric (like what the yarn is made of or the stitches you are working), but these are good guidelines to keep in mind.

Later we will be talking about Gauge, and how it relates to shaping your project. We’ll also talk about the great information you can learn from your swatch.

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Thank you for visiting!

Tinking Turtle

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