Measuring GaugeBack to Search |
Posted: Tuesday, May 2, 2006 |
Have you been confused by the concept of gauge? If you could not get the right gauge, do you know whether to go up a needle size or down a needle size? To help me understand it, I knitted a swatch of 20 stitches (sts) using three different needles sizes. The photo at the bottom of this article shows the differences. From my swatch: So, if the pattern calls for 5 sts per inch and my swatch gives me 4 sts per inch, I can immediately decide that to get more stitches to the inch, I must use smaller needles. To get less stitches to the inch, use a bigger needle. However, if I am using a fancy stitch like herring bone stitch or if the yarn is fancy and knobbly, it is impossible to measure the number of stitches per inch. So, what I would do is measure the swatch to see if I could get 4 inches for the amount of stitches the swatch calls for. How to decide whether to go up a needle or down a needle if the swatch is more than 4 inches? I found that out last week when I was helping someone. Her swatch was 5.5 inches to 14 sts using a #10 needle. To help me decide which way to go, I converted the swatch to sts per inch and it made a lot of sense for me. It immediately made me see which needle I should be using. So I wrote it all down:
Now I can see that I need more stitches to an inch so I should use a smaller needle! I hope this exercise will help someone out! Posted by Dot Ferneyhough of Jimmy Beans Wool Here is the photo of the swatch with three different needle sizes: |
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