Saturday, August 22, 2009

Gauge Issues

My sleeve for the blueberry sweater was nicely on gauge with the recommended size of needles. Actually, the sleeve was the gauge swatch. After getting the sleeve to nearly the appropriate pre-underarm length, I decided to start the body of the sweater. Apparently I am knitting more tightly now as I have added 1/2-1 stitch per inch. Now I have to figure out if I want to find a larger needle (I'm already knitting with size 11 needles) or if I want to re-figure the math or if I want to concentrate on knitting more loosely. I'd rather not re-figure the math for the gauge I'm actually getting. EZ actually cautions about knitting this sweater at a different gauge because the shoulder shaping doesn't work right. At the moment, I'm not terribly excited about the idea of going shopping for a size 13 needle. On the other hand, I don't know that I could consistently knit more loosely.

Gauge lately has become a problem for me. My sister's two striped socks are actually at slightly different gauges. I have no idea why. I used the exact same yarn and needles for both socks, but the second sock is tighter than the first. I don't recall being more stressed for sock #2 or knitting particularly tightly, but apparently I did. The difference in gauge means one sock fits more snugly than the other. It will be interesting to see how the third sock fits and whether it's of the tighter or looser gauge. Here's hoping my gauge issues sort themselves out soon and I become more consistent between knitting sessions. It would be nice to have a sweater whose body and sleeves don't have wavy sides due to inconsistent gauge.

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