I’ve been knitting away on the sweater for my son whenever I get  a few moments.  For all you moms out there with young children, you know how those free minutes are few and far between, right??

Anyway, I sort of wrapped the work in progress around his torso yesterday evening and I realized that this sweater isn’t going to fit him unless I blocked the life out of it once I’m done.  And the chances of it fitting then.. also highly questionable!  I went back to my notes and it looked like my calculations to size this design down made sense, but why wasn’t my knitting behaving?

Then I read this part in the pattern that says… “Gauge: 19 stitches and 34 rows = 4inches in Ranger Textured Stitch”.  Hah, my gauge swatch that I based my calculations on was done in Stockinette Stitch!

The Ranger Textured Stitch is done using a slip-stitch pattern.  That means that the resulting fabric will be denser and also tighter than it’s smooth, flat, loosey-goosey cousin, Stockinette.  So, guess what I’m doing right now?  About 13 inches through the knitting (gah) I’m swatching again using the right stitch pattern!

Lesson Learned: That fine print, it’s darned important!!

12 thoughts on “The Fine Print

  1. Josie

    Aaaw man! That is a bummer! I hate it when we have to learn the lessons the hard way and I’m not a big fan of swatching and I’ve been lucky so far.

    Reply

  2. affiknity

    Knitting always has a trick up its sleeve, isn’t it? Just when we think we have mastered this art, we are humbled again. Give the sweater a time out so that it behaves next time 🙂

    Reply

  3. Alice

    Breathe deeply….I’ve misread and omitted so many things in patterns..lol Can’t take it too seriously..get back at it 🙂

    Reply

  4. nsangheetha

    Cheer Up 🙂 I have a year old daughter.And I started a crocheted sweater as per pattern and also checked the foundation chain for her size. But as I proceeded it became small and yesterday only I ripped and wound the yarn back. Those 8-9 rows took a week for me working on those small bits of time.
    Cheer Up 🙂 I’m saying myself.

    Reply

  5. essknits

    I totally know what you are saying about the few spare minutes. And they seem to get even fewer by the day. 🙂
    Well, I don’t know how many times I have had the swatch issues myself. Thankfully most of the times I can just calculate the new numbers based on what’s on the needles and do a few adjustments. However, there have been N number of times where I have frogged and restarted from scratch as well.
    Hope you are doing well. TC

    Reply

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