Category Archives: FYI

Swatches

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Swatches are lame. And dumb. And I don’t like doing them. But I do them. Because you have to. They are important. Like vegetables. Or doing sit-ups.

I get it; you’re all excited for your project to start. You got out your really cool knitting bag, and you have your lovely new yarn next to you, and those great new Addi Turbos, and you’re just itching to jump in and start knitting up that fantastic new sweater.

Making a gauge swatch is like measuring twice and cutting once (didn’t your teacher/dad/grandpa/random authority figure ever say that to you? OK… Just me). Without the proper gauge, your super beautiful, complicated cabled sweater is going to end up fitting your kid sister, or being too big for Shaquile O’Neil. And that would be sad. Making a gauge swatch is quick (ish) and painless (or at least more painless than having to tear out an entire sweater after you finished).

Cast on enough stitches so that you have about 4 inches of knitting.

Knit in the pattern called for in your pattern. For example, if the gauge says “4 sts/in in garter stitch”, knit in garter stitch. If the pattern says “7 sts/inch in lace pattern #1”, knit lace pattern #1. Work the gauge until it is roughly square. Bind off loosely, or transfer the live stitches to a piece of scrap yarn.

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(For some reason I decided to be fancy and add a seed stitch border to this swatch.  This just adds more work, but if that’s what you want to do, I won’t stop you.)

 

Once you have the squareish swatch, lay it out flat. People who actually are good at this stuff say to wash and block the swatch the way that you will treat the final product. That is too much effort for me. Yes, doing that will give you a more exact result, but I don’t wanna. *pout* I just give the swatch a couple tugs in either direction to make the stitches sit nicely, and lay the square out flat on a table, couch cushion, or my leg. If the swatch is being particularly squirrely and trying to roll up, I might throw a couple pins in the edges to hold it flat, but not pull it too tightly (Pin it to the couch cushion… not your leg).

Then using a ruler, tape measure or gauge counter, I’ll measure three or four spots in the middle of the swatch, and see how many stitches will fall in an inch. If I get different numbers of stitches, I’ll average them out to get my working gauge.

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(See how there are 5 stitches  for every inch?  I even marked some of them for you.  This swatch has a gauge of 5 sts/inch.)

If you’re swatching a pattern (like a lace or some sort of fancy-pants ribbing) you’ll do things a little differently. Instead of counting how many stitches in an inch, you’ll count how wide a single repeat is. Since you know how many stitches are in a repeat, you can use that to get a gauge.  For example, a lace pattern takes 15 stitches and is 2 inches wide. Then, your gauge is 15sts/2inches, or 7.5 sts/in.

So now you have your gauge. Is it right for your pattern? If the gauge is too big for the pattern (a lower number than the pattern’s gauge), go down a needle size or two to get the right gauge. If the gauge is too fine for the pattern (a higher number than the pattern’s gauge), go up a size or two, and try making the swatch again.

I know… it feels like busy work, but it’s totally worth it.

Actually, it is the size of the boat that matters

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Gauge is a tricky concept to talk about, because it’s kind of abstract, but it’s not a tricky concept to understand. Gauge really means the size of the stitches of the knitting that you are producing. It’s usually measured in stitches per inch (for example, if you see a ball of yarn that says “4 sts/in” on the label, that means that the yarn manufacturer thinks that the yarn works best at 4 stitches per inch).

Gauge can play a HUGE role in how a project turns out. For example take a look at these two hats:

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These hats are (I kid you not) exactally the same. They were both made with the Chunky Hat pattern that I posted Wednesday. The only thing I did was change the yarn and needles to change the gauge. The blue hat was knit at a gauge of about 2 stitches per inch, the red hat was knit at a gauge of about 8 stitches per inch.

So how do you get different gauges? You change two variables. Your yarn and your needles. First pick a yarn that will get you close to your gauge (by looking at the label on the yarn package you can get a rough estimate of your expected gauge). Then, through trial and error, try different needles to get your desired gauge (again the yarn label will suggest a needle for you to use).

The yarn you use will dictate (to a point) what needles you can use. For example, the bulky blue yarn is super thick, so you could probably use needles from about a 10 to about a 15. 15s are going to give you a loosely knit (large gauge) fabric, and 10s are going to give you really dense fabric with a tighter gauge.  If you tried to use smaller needles (like 5s or 3s), you’d have almost no chance of being able to knit, since the needles would be so much smaller.

From the Back of a Galloping Jackass

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I am a total perfectionist.  Guilty.

“But wait,” you say.  “I’ve seen typos and mistakes on this blog, and that one post has the wrong pictures, and I’m pretty sure that the third sentence in the second paragraph in your fifth post used the subjunctive mood where you should have used the indicative.”

To which I say,  “Oh crap, let me go back and fix that.”

When it comes to knitting, I’m even worse.  I am merciless with my knitting.  I’ll unravel an entire sweater if I don’t like how a cast-on edge is laying.  It drives my husband nuts.  He’ll shudder and yell “No!” when he sees me start to frog* a project.  But, if I know a project is so messed up, ill-fitting, or just plain wrong to wear on a regular basis, I have no trouble ripping up a project and re-knitting it until it’s perfect.

I do have a rule about when it is necessary to frog a project, though (although if you ask my husband, he’d probably say that I can’t finish a project without ripping it out at least once).  This gem of wisdom was given to me by a little old German lady who owned the knitting shop near my college campus, and I still use it today:

   “If it can’t be seen from the back of a galloping jackass, you don’t need to fix it.”

-Brigitte (I forgot her last name) circa 2008

Practically, this means that if the mistake isn’t big, doesn’t affect the overall fit of the garment, or falls outside of the most visible areas of the garment (for example, in the armpit of a sweater), you can leave the mistake be.

Unless you are dumb and a perfectionist like me.

 

 

*Frog-knitterspeak for unraveling a piece of knitting, because you “rrrip-it, rrrip-it.”  A dumb term, but don’t blame me.  I didn’t make it up.

The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater

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So, have you ever heard of the CURSE OF THE BOYFRIEND SWEATER? (You’re supposed to read that like the announcer introducing a B-horror movie, in case you were wondering.)  The superstition is that if you make a sweater for your boyfriend (or girlfriend, I suppose), you’ll be broken up by the time you bind off.   I’m not making this up.  It’s even got it’s own Wikipedia page.

I’m not terribly superstitious, but I don’t doubt that this occurs.  (I know I refused to make a sweater for my husband until we got married, just in case.)   I propose that the “curse” actually happens for one of two reasons.

1. You picked an ugly-ass sweater pattern, or at least a sweater that you want your significant other to wear, but not one that he would ever be caught dead in in a million years.  These miscommunications can lead to hurt feelings, bickering, and general  unpleasantness.  Not good at all.

2.  Most sweaters take a loooong time to knit, unless you’re really on a mission a typical knitter won’t complete a sweater in less than several months.   Your typical dating relationship (that doesn’t go on to marriage and all that jazz) may not last quite that long. (Of course, I’m generalizing, but you get my point.)

So, I’m not sure that I buy into the whole superstition thing, but I certainly can see how there might be a correlation between sweater-making and relationship-ending.  So what’s a girl to do if she wants to dress up her guy in cozy knitwear?  How about a nice scarf?  A cozy hat?  Maybe a cool pair of gloves?

Unless, of course, you want your relationship to end but you don’t like confrontation.  In that case, knit away!  Might I recommend this classy number modeled by Mr. Cosby?

Hello World!

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Starting blogs is always awkward.  It’s like trying to break the ice at a party, but instead of just one person looking at you, the whole internet is watching.  It’s very weird, and there is a lot of pressure to say something witty.

Well, I don’t have much witty to say, so I suppose I’ll just share my vision of what this blog will become.  (And I can always edit this post later if I come up with some fantastic introductory post and I want to rewrite history.  Yay computers!)

On The Needles is going to be a resource for new and intermediate knitters looking for a friend to hang out with and talk knitting.  I will be posting original patterns, tutorials, and inspiration.  I love everything about knitting, and want to share my enthusiasm for such a fantastic hobby.

My mom taught me how to knit when I was just a kid, and I have pretty much consistently had at least one project on my needles for the last 15 years.  I mostly knit garments (I love making sweaters and shawls), but I have done some other weird projects, too (I knit an anatomically correct worm model when I worked in a biology lab for a couple years).  I enjoy designing my own patterns, and dying and spinning my own yarn, because I am a little bit of a control freak.

So, I’d love to hear from you, readers!  Let me know what you want to see, what projects you want to make, and what questions you are itching to have answered.

And, before I start rambling on too long, I will leave you with this little guy to brighten your day:

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Keep on knitting!

-Allison