Woe!
So my family and I moved two weekends ago, but I managed to knit a swatch, and cast on and get started. Alas, no reliable DSL at home yet or I could show pictures of the following tale of woe.
The pattern only goes up to a 46 inch bust, and since I'm a 47 I was ready to add a few stiches here and there, make the ralagan seam a little longer, etc. to compensate. So my swatch measures out way too tight on 7's, go up to 8's and it's pretty good with the brown. Right on, I say. I cast on and start knitting away. I noticed that my ralagan shaping was looking pretty darn tight and wasn't measuring up the way it should have. I pull out my trusty measuring tape and whadda ya know, my gauge is way off, like 25 stitches over 4 inches instead of 19. Woah. So that sucker was frogged like nobodies business. Went up to 9 needles and the gauge was still off 21.5 stitches with the green. But I can't go up any higher unless I want a lacy sweater.... So I redid the math, cast on and started over. I finally started the torso last night and felt pretty vindicated. I'm thinking either my yarn is funky, the pattern's gauge is funky or there's a little yarn gnome magically making my yarn do funky things, either way there's some supreme funkiness going on here. I had originally wanted to make the long sleeve version, but with all the changes I had to do I think I'm going to run out of yarn. I guess I could order more and pray that it'll look right.
Thankfully I'm used to having to tweak patterns to fit my chest or I would have pulled my hair out.
The pattern only goes up to a 46 inch bust, and since I'm a 47 I was ready to add a few stiches here and there, make the ralagan seam a little longer, etc. to compensate. So my swatch measures out way too tight on 7's, go up to 8's and it's pretty good with the brown. Right on, I say. I cast on and start knitting away. I noticed that my ralagan shaping was looking pretty darn tight and wasn't measuring up the way it should have. I pull out my trusty measuring tape and whadda ya know, my gauge is way off, like 25 stitches over 4 inches instead of 19. Woah. So that sucker was frogged like nobodies business. Went up to 9 needles and the gauge was still off 21.5 stitches with the green. But I can't go up any higher unless I want a lacy sweater.... So I redid the math, cast on and started over. I finally started the torso last night and felt pretty vindicated. I'm thinking either my yarn is funky, the pattern's gauge is funky or there's a little yarn gnome magically making my yarn do funky things, either way there's some supreme funkiness going on here. I had originally wanted to make the long sleeve version, but with all the changes I had to do I think I'm going to run out of yarn. I guess I could order more and pray that it'll look right.
Thankfully I'm used to having to tweak patterns to fit my chest or I would have pulled my hair out.
posted by Heather at 8:53 AM
2 Comments:
What yarn are you using? I have discovered that with all of my swatches I knit tighter than when knitting the actual garment so I've learned to compensate before I start. Maybe you're the opposite. If it's already that tight when you're knitting flat you might want to be careful when you join because I think people tend to knit tighter (I certainly do). Good luck!
I'm using size 10's for mine.
Yes, you heard right- 10's. It was the only way for me to make gauge.
I've almost finished my raglan increases and even though my stitches don't look as cute and small as on her sample, it still looks alright overall. So if you need to go up, I wouldn't worry too much.
Either the pattern writer knits really loosely or we knit really tightly (I've found these days, my stitches have become very small and even- I've had to go up in needle size on almost every pattern I do).
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