You don't have to get gauge

You don’t have to get gauge!!

Thanks to the pandemic, much of my at home time is now devoted to reading about all things knitting on all the various social channels I have. One thing I’ve noticed is a slate of posts lamenting an inability to get the specified gauge on a pattern. Another related-to-this-post topic is folks getting gauge but not liking the fabric they created.

Therein lies the key! It’s better to aim for a fabric you actually like, or one you can achieve, and see if you can work a different size of the pattern to compensate.

Caveat: I realize that this could be difficult depending on your size and the sizes available in the pattern. For that, I will continue to advocate for a wide range in sizes for knitwear design in general and provide that in my own patterns!

Example one: you swatch to get a gauge of 5 stitches per inch for a fingering weight sweater. But the yarn you’re using is on the lighter side, and 5 stitches per inch is airy enough that folks might get a show of what’s under your sweater instead of admiring your hand-knit FO! You’d prefer to knit closer to 6 stitches per inch to get a denser fabric.

There’s a good chance you can use the pattern you already have, but knit a different size that will give you the perfect combo of gauge + size. You can also use this technique on individual parts of patterns like sweater sleeves.

First, you’ll need to know your bust circumference + your desired ease.

Inches:

Let’s take a 40 inch bust + 2 inches of positive ease. 42 inches multiplied by 5 stitches per inch would give me 210 stitches at the widest part of the bust in the pattern gauge.

In my preferred gauge of 6 stitches per inch, 42 * 6 would give me 252 stitches. Find the section of the pattern where you have all the body stitches on the needle (that’s front + underarm + back + underarm, so make sure you find the part AFTER the sleeve separation and underarm cast-on!). Do any of the sizes have a body stitch count close to 252? That’s the size you want to knit!

Centimeters:

Same size but slightly different math. We’ll need to adjust the gauge calculation - it will be (6/2.5), giving us 2.4 stitches per cm.

100 cm bust + 5 cm of positive ease will be 105 cm, multiplied by 2.4 stitches per cm, giving us 252 stitches! Find a size with a body stitch count close to 252 and you’re ready to go.

In this example, because you have a tighter gauge than the pattern, you’ll end up knitting a larger size, but the reverse could also be true if you want to knit a looser gauge by knitting a smaller size!

Unfortunately, this method isn’t a silver bullet for accommodating differences in gauge - if you’re already knitting one of the largest sizes available in the pattern, it will be hard to use a tighter gauge to knit a larger size as those numbers may not be available in pattern. Similarly, if you’re knitting one of the smallest sizes, you may not be able to knit a looser gauge and a smaller size. In the same vein, you probably won’t be able to reimagine a pattern written for fingering weight in bulky weight, or vice versa.

Do swatches lie, or are they just telling an incomplete truth?

Swatches are supposed to help knitters identify their gauge with various yarn and needle combos and use that to create a finished object in the size they’re expecting. But, too often knitters complain that their swatch lied, as their WIP is working up to be too large or small. What’s the point of making a swatch if it will only let you down?

Much swatching advice has to do with the time of day, mental state, and knitting conditions. For example, if you typically do your knitting after dinner, beverage of choice in hand, while watching Netflix, so should you knit your swatch. And there’s the magical technique that allows you to swatch in the round without knitting an actual tube, which lets you avoid gauge differences in your knit vs purl rows when knitting flat.

But there are so many other factors besides these! Some of them require a certain amount of experience and experimenting with a variety of different types of projects, so the more types of projects you try out, the more data you can collect about how you personally knit. From here on out, I’ll be sharing some personal examples I’ve discovered while knitting a variety of different objects, which will hopefully help you identify your own gauge quirks even if the examples don’t exactly match your situation.

A big factor I’ve noticed causes major changes in gauge is the width of the project round or row. For example, for me, a stockinette hat knit on 16” circulars with US 7s will come out with a tighter gauge than a 300-stitch stockinette sweater body on a 32” circ with US 7s. Something about those hundreds of stitches just makes me relax! Taking that same sweater, when I move to the sleeves I have one of two things occur: I use magic loop, in which case my gauge is way tighter than the body, or I use a 12” circ and my gauge is only a little tighter than the body. If I knit the sweater in pieces (front and back), then seamed it, the lower stitch count (and needing to knit and purl to maintain stockinette) would result in a tighter gauge, so I might not need to size down a needle. What this has taught me is that in order to keep a consistent gauge across a project’s different elements, I need to use either smaller or larger needles depending on what part of the sweater I’m knitting. This is usually the case with ribbing vs not-ribbing, but for me it applies to parts beyond that.

And that’s just talking stockinette! Now let’s consider the different types of stitch patterns - ribbing, cables, lace and the like. Alternating knits and purls make me tighten up, so I rarely need to go down a needle size for the ribbing on a sweater or hat. The same goes for cables - being slowed down by the stitch pattern keeps my gauge from loosening up too much, so it’s less likely that I need to size down a needle.

Are you knitting two matching objects, one after the other, like socks or sleeves? If you’re like me, your gauge may loosen up on the second one as you get familiar with the pattern. If possible, you can mitigate this by knitting two-at-a-time, and if not, keep this in mind as you knit the second object, checking your gauge to make sure it isn’t too different, or consider using a different needle size.

Next, consider the type of needles you’re using. If you have a variety of types (circs vs straight needles, wood vs metal, or even 2 different brands of the same type of needle), differences in those might get you different gauge results. For example, I get a much tighter gauge on metal needles than the same size needle in wood or bamboo. If my swatch on a wooden needle just about got me gauge, I might knit the object with metal needles of the same size instead to help tighten up that last little bit. Or, I have bamboo needles with very long tapers, meaning I have to push the stitch far back onto the right needle for it to be the right size. Since I knit very close to the tips of my needles, using the bamboo tips can result in smaller stitches and change my stitch or row gauge. Knitting with massive needles and bulky yarn, I always get a snug gauge because I have to slow down or risk letting stitches slip off the needles!

Finally, let’s talk a little bit about the yarn you’ve chosen for the pattern. If you’re like me, you rarely use the exact yarn the designer used in the original pattern. But going with a different type or blend of fiber can affect your gauge too! The experience that really drove this home for me was knitting socks. My standard recipe is always: a 64 stitch sock on my trusty metal 0s...until that doesn’t work. I had been using extremely soft and squishy merino for most of my socks, so I could get a nice bulletproof fabric with this stitch/needle combo. Enter Knit Picks Hawthorne, which is a DENSE sock yarn that doesn’t squish down easily. Knitting it on 0s was awful, and once I sized up to a more appropriate needle, 64 stitches would no longer work or I’d end up with socks too large for me.

At this point, you may be ready to give up - with so many factors to take into account how could anyone possibly be able to knit anything that fits? Start with what you have - what projects have you completed that ended up with a different gauge or fit than you were expecting? Go and re-measure your gauge on those, and on projects that turned out perfectly. See if you got a different gauge on the sweater body, collar, or sleeve, and compare that to the stated gauge of the pattern (or the gauge you were aiming for, if different). Compare paired objects like socks and sleeves to each other - are they different gauges? Take stock of your available needles - if you have multiple options available, what are your preferred needles/cables for what types of projects? What kind of gauge can you expect with that combo?