Yarn on Thursday: The importance of Gauge

Gauge. It actually is very important. SWATCHING is way more important than I thought.

I freely admit that, until I did Lesson #3 of the TKGA Basics, Basics, Basics course, I was not a swatcher. "It couldn't make all that much difference," I reasoned. "I mean, the stuff I knit still mostly fits."

Well, sort of. And most of it could fit a lot better, really. (I attribute the fact that my socks fit me to sheer, blind luck and the stretchiness of sock yarns.) Some of it, like my first Celtic cabled sweater, would have fit the Octomom while she was late in her most recent pregnancy. Some of it had to be gifted to my smallest relatives, since it just wasn't gonna fit me, no way, no how. The largest misadventure was a sailing sweater (there were little sailboats on the yoke) I knit for my mother, which she deemed "too big", so she frogged it and re-knit it... and it wound up fitting her toddler godson.

So, clearly, the not-swatching thing really hasn't been working out for me.

My eye-opening moment? This photo (also posted last week, yes, you've seen it before) - it's of swatches. Identical yarn, identical needles... and they're 28 stitches wide by 32 rows high. Swatch #4 has 4 extra rows, and Swatch #6 was actually 27 stitches, just to be accurate, but STILL. Here are six different patterns, and there are some VERY different results!!


So, this swatching thing? It's actually a really good idea. If you'd like to get started, or read more: The brief overview can be found on CJ Wyche's site, here - basic nuts and bolts, specially targeted to beginning knitters. Faina Goberstein has a comprehensive Why and How To on gauge and swatches - go check it out. She also has pointers to Jenna Wilson's article on gauge and Marilyn A Roberts' article on swatching, both in Knitty. Purlwise has a whole bunch of stitch swatch pictures on her blog, which is fun to poke around anyway.

And just in case you were thinking "Hey, how much difference could you get in a swatch, anyway? This swatching thing - if you use the yarn and needles, it'll be close enough, right?" lookie here. These were knit with the same needles and the same yarn, and there's a vast difference in gauge.



Garter Stitch Swatch

Seed Stitch Swatch
I mean - that's a pretty huge difference - I was just knitting the larger ones, without doing anything special, and for the smaller ones, I was trying to knit tightly and evenly. Same needles. Same yarn. A sweater done with the bigger swatch tension would fit me; the smaller might not even fit my smallest niece. Since I'm (once I finish at least two more projects, really) going to knit myself a cabled biker jacket (got the pattern from a library book, then found it here using Google Books), I really want it to fit, since my two ACTUAL biker jackets are either too small or too large right now!