At some point in your knitting, gauge becomes important. It might not have factored in at all when you were in the scarf stage (if it goes around your neck, then great!), but when you enter the world of garment knitting, gauge becomes crucial.
Way back when, yarn came in just a few weights (which refers to the thickness of the yarn). In Europe, there was fingering (very fine), 4-ply (fine), and Aran (heavier); The US had sport and worsted. Yarn was also pretty much just wool. Today, yarns come in a much wider variety of weights and are composed of all sorts of fibers – natural and man-made. This proves to be a bit of a problem when you are trying to find the perfect yarn for your pattern.
In the US, there is a standard that classifies yarns based on their gauge. Six classifications exist, beginning with “1″ for super fine yarns (lace) to “6″ for super bulky. The problem is that you can’t go solely by classification, because within each classification a range of stitches per inch is given. There is enough variance within a classification to render a yarn not suitable for a pattern.
Let’s take a quick look at stitches per inch to see why this is the case. I like to make my gauge swatch larger than 4″ – that way I can measure a 4″ width that does not include the edge stitches. I can get 18 stitches over 4″ on a US 8 with a worsted weight wool. I might get 17 stitches over 4″ on a US 8 with a worsted weight cotton. Another brand of wool might yield 19 stitches over 4″ on a US 8. While this may not seem like a big difference, when you are working over 80 stitches – the resulting fabric could range between 16.75″ to almost 19.”
What does this all mean? Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter of substituting a worsted for a worsted – you need to really pay attention to gauge. Don’t let this discourage you, though. Gauge can be adjusted by changing needle size.
Stay tuned for part two of this series, when I discuss why needle sizes in patterns are only suggestions. You can also take my class: Gauge? What Gauge?
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[...] Yesterday afternoon I logged in a hole stack of knitting patterns that have arrived this week and now my fingers are itching to make a hat. One set of patterns we got were from Figheadh Yarnworks. Oh what fun designs! So I’m going to whip up a Honeycomb Cable Cap using Mermaid from FibraNatura. First, of course, I’ll do a gauge swatch… [...]