The Gauge, She Lies

by Jana

I’ve been thinking lately about the whole notion of gauge and gauge swatches in knitting. It’s taken as the First Commandment of Knitting that you must do a gauge swatch of at least 4” square and then wash and block it in order to determine your gauge for your garment. The assumption is that, if you do this, you’ll get the exact size you choose to knit. Some of you may belong to this school of belief – I’ve even had one knitter near and dear to me claim that she always gets gauge and it always works out. If she’s not just messing with my head, then I’m happy for her. But I have to tell you, that ain’t my experience.

Let’s start with the gauge for a pattern. Even using the exact same yarn in the same color as the pattern, I’ve almost never gotten the gauge called for using the recommended needle size. I always go down at least two sizes to get anywhere near the gauge the pattern requires. I remember one Vogue Knitting pattern where my gauge wasn’t even in the same zip code as the pattern. By going down to practically sock needles and knitting as tightly as I could with that bulky-weight yarn, I finally got the gauge called for – but the resulting fabric could stand on its own and serve to insulate the space shuttle, it was so dense. When I looked at the picture of the sweater in VK and used the model’s hand as a relative size measurement, it was obvious that the sweater pictured could not have been knit in the recommended gauge either.

I recall reading somewhere that Elizabeth Zimmerman said that she believed the gauge listed in patterns was as tight as humans could conceivably knit. That’s not how I knit, and that’s one reason I say that gauge is a lying liar.

Here’s the second reason I question gauge’s honesty: the gauge you’ll get over a 4 inch square is nothing at all like the size the garment will be once you’ve knit something 44 inches or whatever around. A 4 inch square cannot really account for drape or the effect of thick and thin yarn over a much larger area. It’s really frustrating to knit the whole back of a sweater and have it come out at 50 inches wide when you were aiming for 40.  Even if you take your ruler and measure your gauge over 4 inches at various places on the sweater back and are getting 4 stitches/inch, and even though you cast on and worked 160 stitches, which ought to equal 40 inches, you’re still likely, if you’re me, to get something a lot bigger.

What’s a knitter to do? My only solution has been to cultivate a relaxed attitude about how something fits. I don’t mind clothes being a bit oversized. I also measure the total width of garment pieces early in the process and decrease (rarely, increase) to bring things back in line. I can do that because I don’t care to knit garments with lots of “sewing pattern shaping,” as I think of it. I’d be curious to hear how the rest of you feel.