Being thoroughly sick of making hats and scarves for gifts,
I have decided to make a sweater for myself.
So...I'm sitting on the couch, swatching. Grumbling and cursing. The Dumbplumber (my everlovin' sweetie of a
husband) who rarely pays attention....I swear I could dye my hair green...but
....I digress......
He asks: "What
are you making"
"A swatch", I say or more correctly, bitch.
The knitters will understand and feel my pain. Swatching is the bane of a knitter's
existence and requires math. (dun dun
dun duuuunnn scary music sound) For
those non-knitting people let me explain.
Swatching is when you knit a
bunch of samples to find out if your knitting gauge and number of stitches will
make your project be the right size.
Attempting to explain to The Dumbplumber, (ladies...don't attempt this at home. Especially if you have both had
a drink or two.)
Me explaining: "You
have a pattern like THIS one ...that I plan to make.
There is a
suggestion on the yarn, size of needles and the number of stitches per inch and
the number of rows per inch. If you can
knit this gauge....you are in like Flynn (whatever that means). If not. Then your sweater will fit Godzilla
or your sweater will fit a midget, but certainly not YOU.
For example
1. The pattern calls for 20 stitches to equal 4 inches on
size 7 needles
2. The pattern calls for 60 stitches for a particular piece:
say a part of the front. Then the piece
should equal 60/20 = 3 units So...then 3 units should be 3 x 4"
= a 12
inch piece
All well and good, until you substitute another yarn and
when you take into consideration that each person has a different style and
tension in knitting. Also if you use a different yarn, it may not
knit up the same.
For example: If my
gauge works out to 16 stitches = 4
inches then the piece will be much larger.
60 stitches/16 stitches =
3.75 units 3.75 x 4 = 15 inch piece.
THREE inches too big on just one piece!! Multiply this effect over all of the other
parts of the sweater and you have a gigantically larger than you want sweater.
Go the other way and assume you have MORE stitches per inch
and then your sweater will be tiny. All that time you spent knitting will have
been wasted.
The only way to know your gauge is to make a swatch, which is to knit, in the
pattern, a 4 x4 inch (at least) section.
Boooorrrring. But what is worse
is to not make a swatches and make a sweater that no one born on this Earth can
wear. If you don't swatch you will be
wasting hours upon hours of time. Even though this is boring beyond belief,
it's better than not doing it. And so
on."
Until the Dumbplumber's eyes begin to roll backwards in his
head.
Dumbplumber having listened to all of this above reasoning
(or rather bitching)
Asks: " So what do you do with this stuff you are
knitting now?"
"I tear it up and roll it back into a ball", I
say.
Staring at me in disbelief......"You are f***ing nuts.",
says he.
I can't disagree.
