Free Knitting Rules! by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee Page A

yarn, patterns, technique … these are all ideas that relate to gauge, and very few things in knitting (except maybe, and only maybe, what color you knit with) don’t relate back to gauge. It’s also the thing that gives knitters the most grief.
    If you go into a yarn shop full of knitters and ask them to tell you about gauge, two will tell you their current project is turning out huge even though they “got gauge,” one will tell you her current project is turning out too small even though she “got gauge,” the one by the window will say she “always gets gauge” (and everyone will glare at her), and one knitter will sob helplessly because she’s cast on a new sweater six times, tried a gauge swatch ninetimes, changed needle sizes more often than most people change their minds, and, still the last time she measured a swatch she was only “close.”
    In Canada and the United Kingdom (and in patterns hailing from those countries), knitters often refer to the number of stitches to any given area as “tension” and knit “tension squares” instead of the “gauge swatches” you find in the United States. Despite the difference in terminology, knitters seem to get messed up over it at about the same rate, but the term
tension
does make for better jokes. Not too long ago, at a restaurant with a bunch of Canadian knitters, a waiter offered wine. One knitter declined, saying “No thank you, alcohol affects my tension,” and another quipped back, “Me too, but my knitting stays the same.”
PROS AND CONS
    Because gauge is the most important concept in knitting, there are those who believe it’s the root of all knitting trouble. These knitters, no matter what goes wrong with your knitting, will blame gauge. If it’s too big, if it’s too small, if the color runs, it’s stolen by pirates and pecked half to death by a parrot before you can pull it away … when you take it to other knitters for sympathy and advice, one of them will say, “It’s the gauge.”
    Someone, looking at the massive sleeves or the too tight neckline or the holes from the beak of a wild parrot and then fingering the stitches and noting the running dye or the misshapen shoulders, will — especially if there is no other explanation for the pit of despair and thenightmare that your knitting has become, even if you’ve just explained that the whole trouble with the sweater is coming from a stitch in the pattern that you don’t understand, or you missed the directions for the sleeve cap — ignore all of this, look you in the eye, and say, “Did you get gauge? Maybe your gauge is off.”
    Then there are knitters on the other side of the coin. These are knitters who can’t seem to accept that gauge really does matter and that you have to understand a little about it to get predictable results. These people are forever turning up at knitting circles with enormous hats, mittens for giants, and sweaters with necklines too small to go over a poodle’s head. There they stand, morosely caressing their forlorn and disappointing knitting, complaining that nothing ever works out for them. These knitters, when you come up to them and say, “Oh dear, this is a classic gauge problem,” will look at you and admit they didn’t knit a swatch, don’t ever knit a swatch, don’t think swatch knitting is smart: in fact, their other hobby is mocking those who knit swatches and pointing and laughing at them behind their backs.
    There is no law that says you must knit swatches or worry about gauge. There is, however, the law of averages, which says if you ignore gauge, there will be consequences. If you can live with the consequences, you can ignore gauge.
KNOWING WHEN TO RESPECT IT
    Having been both of those knitters at some point in my life, I’ve come to believe that there’s a time and a place for everything, and