Ah, to hear the delightful sound of the kitchen doorbell when your expecting yarn. Peeked out the window (make it a rule to avoid people trying to save my soul) and saw that guy in THE brown uniform! My Lopi yarn from Webs had arrived for the Einstein Coat! The yarn is a funky raspberry rust color in darn scratchy rustic feeling wool.
So I get that one needs to knit a swatch for checking gauge for almost all projects and that is what I did last night. The issue is just how one gleans information from said swatch gauge project. In the painfully overpriced beginner's class I took 17 months ago she never taught us about gauge. Well, she never taught us a lot of things, damn her. So while at work pretending to be typing in patient care notes I am actually scourging the Internet for directions on how exactly to measure and interpret said measurements. The knitting wizard at work was at a professional class and unavailable to laugh at me with my problem. Back to my raspberry swatch, I know I've got the correct height for the amount of rows but the trouble comes in when I'm measuring width. At places it is 3.5 to 3.75 inches but it's supposed to be 4 inches. So to me that says I should go UP a needle size but two websites were telling me I should go down a needle size. I see an evening of knitting swatches with all sorts of needle sizes and a bottle of red wine. Oh, also downloaded 26 friggin songs from iTunes so I gotta be ready now!
EDIT: Okay so did another swatch in the next smallest needle and it was still to small now in both width and height so I was RIGHT about needing bigger needles. Thank goodness the algebra, trig, pre-calculus, statics, and several physics classes I took in college paid off.
Hiya!
On the DIY show Knitty Gritty, Lily Chin had a neat tip: measure your swatch while it is hanging from the needles, especially to see the true drape and hang of the fabric. Hope this helps!
=:8
Posted by: Kimberly | April 19, 2006 at 09:12 PM