I finished Quincy and, unfortunately, no pictures have been taken because my hubby works late on Wednesday. So hopefully pictures tomorrow! It was a truly satisfying knit and not nearly as difficult as it looks.
So, today we are going to revisit the importance of swatching. Not the most exciting topic in the world, though because I have taken a new vigilance in my approach, I have had much more success with my finished projects.
I will come clean right away. I haven't always respected the mighty little gauge swatch. Because I am a straight arrow, and all the patterns in the world tell you "TO SAVE TIME, CHECK YOUR GAUGE". They even yell at you with all those caps, have you noticed? Almost violent.
I almost always made a gauge swatch, especially when I was a baby knitter and couldn't tell the difference between yarns or fibers or knitted fabrics. So, now that I am gaining confidence, I started getting lazy. I would quickly cast on 20 stitches, knit, knit, knit, dutifully bind off because, "Are you going to be wearing those knitting needles?" as one book commanded. I would measure faster than you can say "metal gauge calculator," check that, yes, I was at 4 stitches per inch (because many books would say stitch gauge is more important than row gauge) and then cast on for my project.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) this slap, dash system worked well enough that no alarm bells started ringing for some time. But then I started consistently getting finished items that were too big. Really too big. How can that be? I DID knit a gauge swatch (all CAPS!) for crying out loud. And my other skills in knitting land were improving but who cares if they finished item is made to fit an elephant. Or some freak person with a 25" head.
So, that is what this blog entry will attempt to help with: understanding what the benefits are of a test swatch besides merely bonus points for following the rules.
How do you know if you have the proper gauge? This was an issue that plagued me in my young knitting life. I still don't do a terrific job at this, but I am finally learning. The deal is this: knitting is stretchy. It can be VVVVVEEEEEERRRRRRYYYYY stretchy or nearly a life preserver it is so dense. The combination of yarn type and the resulting fabric makes a gigantic crap shoot, if you ask me. Bamboo and wool are two entirely different beasts. Yet we somehow try to make them act the same when we want to substitute yarns in a pattern.
Before I got some knitting brains, I would gloss right over this point. I never paid attention to the type of yarn the pattern called for other than the gauge. I would notice thin or thick because that impacted gauge, but that is it. Wrong-O. Bamboo, wool, cotton, rayon, soy and every version of a plastic bag in between reminds us that no two yarns are created equal. If at all possible, when substituting yarns pick ones that have similar fibers. This will help it drape (or not) similarly and be one step closer to a (hopefully) successful knitted item. If you are like me and are determined to use the stash that is getting embarrassingly large, resist the urge to pick the first thing your hand touches.
As we also know, the wrapper around the yarn gives us the manufacturer's idea of what the gauge should be for that particular yarn. I found out, though, one worsted weight yarn is dramatically different from another supposedly worsted weight yarn. This drove me crazy. Even different colors of the same yarn can be varying thicknesses because of how the yarn absorbs the dyes. True story.
Nevertheless, I tried to get the gauge on the wrapper. If I needed more stitches, I switched to a smaller needle. If needed fewer stitches per inch, I would switch to a larger needle.
Note that this is only a starting point. Don't think this is Knitting Law, that you can only use this yarn at the gauge the yarn company has printed on their labels. One yarn in particular I have worked with (names withheld to protect the guilty), the wrapper stated it was a bulky weight yarn and it was the most standard worsted weight yarn you have ever seen at 4 stitches = 1". There was no way this yarn could pull off 3 stitches = 1" on its best day, 4.5 maybe, but bulky? A resounding no.
When you hold the swatched fabric in your hand (another reason you have to bind off), how does the fabric feel? Is it too floppy? I find if I can see through it too easily, there is too much "air" between each stitch, then the gauge is too loose.
However, this last statement may be false in a court of law. What are you going to use this fabric for? Picture a thin sock yarn. Do you want a dense fabric for a sock or a light and airy lace scarf? Maybe that fabric that may not work for a dense fabric would look very much a perfect match for your Aunt Sally's 9,000th scarf you have made her. (The more pressing question: Does she wear the other 8,999 other scarves you have made her? If not, remember Hickory Farms.)
Here is what I am finding is as important as knitting the gauge swatch: washing the swatch. And I do not mean merely making it damp and calling it good. I mean treating it EXACTLY (yes, ALL CAPS!!) like it is a sweater you have spent a thousand hours on so that when you spend a thousand hours on a sweater it will be (hopefully) the size you want.
This is where I royally screwed up. I never treated the swatch like a finished knitted item. No more. Now I soak it and treat it quite roughly, pinning it tightly to an old towel or bed or whatever (if you have a fancy blocking board, extra points for you). I find I really like to stretch my finished items so they are smooooooooooth. I love the look of the fabrc, how the stitches pop and everything gets evened out and looks like a million bucks. If you know that you don't need to bounce a quarter off the fabric, then block appropriately to how you usually block your finished garments.
This lovely little last point explains why none of my finished items fit like I wanted them to. I never washed my swatches. I maybe spread them out a bit with my fingers but never wanted to take the time to wash them.
To make myself slow down a bit and treat this whole swatch business a bit more seriously, I now knit four or five swatches from different yarns at the same time. This makes me feel like I am not wasting time for one to soak, but just think how much information I will have when I have tested five yarns!
To persuade you fully as to why you want to wash your swatches, here is a startling difference: (also, all these swatches I am referring to, the numbers are for stockinette stitch)
For this lovely first swatch, the unwashed gauge was 5.5 stitches and 7 rows = 1" with size 5 needles. Especially since this was a smaller stitch count than I usually knit with, I didn't think washing would make that much of a difference. Not so! After washing, the gauge was 5 stitches and 7 rows = 1". I was shocked there was 1/2 stitch difference! We all know that what that can do to your sweater. Sigh. And now that I see how much air is between each stitch, I could probably go down one needle size comfortably to make a denser fabric if I needed to.
When measuring, a trick learned from Maggie Righetti, is to take the total number of stitches (I subtract two stitches from the total to ignore each weird end stitch) and divide by the total length of the fabric. This average helps get a better picture. It also helps to knit a bigger swatch (gasp! I know, who wants to do that?) to also help arrive at a better overall average. She says calculating gauge this way helps prevent the distortion of the fabric that happens when you press down on the stitches with the metal measuring tool.
Another item to note is what type of needles you are using for your knitting. Metal, wood and plastic all grab your yarn differently and can affect the size of your stitches and, consequently, your gauge.
It used to drive me crazy to find a wayward swatch circulating somewhere in my house and not know what needles I used. I learned in a magazine: put the number of knots in the trailing thread as to match the number of the needle size you used. I can't tell you how much this has saved me. Or, if you have different needle sizes for the same color yarn, it makes life that much easier as well. Sometimes I actually plan ahead and just knit with the different needle sizes separated by a purl row so I know where the new needle size begins.
However, on the next two samples I thought I was really smart and would only need to knit one sample swatch, only to find out I wasn't even close to the recommended gauge. So I had to knit another swatch. And that is why I have to knot my hanging thread.
This larger swatch was when I was in love with my new yarn, happy as can be and then found my fabric was way too lose. How could I tell? My gauge was much larger than stated on the label. I was supposed to have 5 stitches to an inch but only had 4.5 stitches on (in?) my swatch. I wouldn't be that concerned if I liked the fabric. But I didn't like the fabric because when I moved it in my hands it was way too floppy and far too much air was in each stitch. I saw through the fabric way too easily.
Now this is my swatch with one size smaller needle. It made a remarkable difference with a gauge of 5 stitches per inch. (Notice how much smaller in general this swatch is? I was sick of the whole thing by this time.) The fabric had much more form and I could hardly see through it, yet wasn't so still it was bullet proof. Why does it matter? If the fabric is too floppy or too stiff it won't hang properly. Another reason you want a stiffer fabric overall, however, is there is less wear on the yarn. The looser the stitches, I learned from some brilliant knitterly person, the more wear on the yarn because it moves more.
Here are two examples where changing a needle size didn't make nearly the difference in the fabric as the above examples:
Both samples have 35 stitches and you can see there wasn't much difference in the length. The top sample used US size 5 needles and was 4.75 stitches per inch. The yarn's wrapper told me I wanted 5 stitches to an inch. The fabric was okay, but I thought I would try a 4. The size 4 needle's sample was 5 stitches = 1" exactly. The fabric is denser, but not nearly as dramatically as the difference between the yellow and cream swatches. Both look fine and, frankly, that is great by me. In this instance, I would be happy to use this yarn with either size needle. But I would not have been happy with either fabric with the yellow and cream swatches discussed.
Hope this helps in getting a bit more control of your knitting. Of course, no matter what we do, there is that bit of knitting we can't control, no matter how diligent we are in swatching. Another knitting guru stated how stressed we are also impacts our knitting stitches. But I am hoping for one less elephant sweater. That would be a victory.
