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!!
Tanis
Oh no! Don’t give up, it’ll be so worth it in the end. That colour is to die for!
Denise@ TheKnittingDen
Oooh, I hate having to rip stuff out. Hope you get it figured out, it’s looking nice as it is 🙂
Kelly
NOOOOOOOOO!!!! Show that knitting who’s boss!!
lindsay
that’s totally something i would do! and probably repeat 3 or 4 times before i REALLY learned!
the color is beautiful!
Jocelyn
ARGH! Bummer. Good thing you tried it on him before you reached the armhole!
Rip rip rip…working on anything else besides this?
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.
Julie
ooh, that’s a shame!! I hate it when that happens. But if it’s any comfort, it happens to all of us!
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 🙂
Alice
Breathe deeply….I’ve misread and omitted so many things in patterns..lol Can’t take it too seriously..get back at it 🙂
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.
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
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