Free Knitting Rules! by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee Page B

that there are times when a healthyrespect for gauge, like a healthy respect for fire and floods, is appropriate. Sweaters, for example. A difference of ¼ inch in a swatch could mean a difference of four inches in a finished sweater. Bad news, big mojo, and, worse, clearly significant in terms of potential knitting disaster.
    Gauge is not some magical thing. There is no incredible standard among designers and their test knitters. Each individual pattern has a gauge that is a reflection of the unique tension of the person who knit it up. Therefore, it is impossible to say “I always knit to gauge.” How can you automatically hit the tension of this unknown knitter?
    On the other hand, ignoring the subtleties of gauge (or deciding to lie to your subconscious knitter) when you’re working on a shawl is not nearly so problematic. A shawl that comes out a few inches (or feet) in an unexpected direction will still yield something you can wear. It might be an afghan, a scarf, or a kerchief instead of a shawl, but it’s still going to be a knitted item of some usefulness.
    You have to look at what your relative gauge risk (RGR) is and decide how just how seriously you’re going to take gauge, swatching, and their attendant hysteria with each individual project.
    If you’re already a knitter, you know all about gauge. In the beginning, it’s the bane of your existence, and as you get more experienced it becomes a tool you can use to fine-tune your knitting. Like a sculptor, you give a little, you take a little, you tweak here and there. Is the pattern a bit too big? Too small? Does it lack drape? Does it flare at the bottom? Gauge, my friends, gauge is the answer to all of this.
FIVE TIMES YOU DON’T NEED TO GET GAUGE
    On the following page, you’ll find the 10 times when you need to pay attention to gauge. I tried hard to come up with 10 times that you could ignore gauge but it turns out that there are only five that I could think of. I tried to get you off the hook, I really did. I phoned friends, I sat in on knitting groups, I searched the Web. But, it turns out there really are twice as many times when you have to pay attention than there are when you can ignore it. I’m sorry.
    Scenario 1
    If you’re knitting a dishcloth . Think about it. What would you knit to test gauge? A square? That’s a dishcloth.
    Scenario 2
    If you’re a “process” knitter and the thought of ripping back your work as many times as it takes is really no problem for you, as it’s all knitting and, darn it, that’s what you like.
    Scenario 3
    If you’re making something for which size doesn’t matter (a scarf or a shawl, for example).
    Scenario 4
    If you have tons of yarn . Buckets. So much that if your gauge is way off and you end up needing 17 more skeins to finish, you don’t care. (We won’t discuss who’s going to fit into something that takes 17 extra skeins: you’re the one who’s going to have a sweater that’s a house cozy.)
    Scenario 5
    If you’re knitting something that starts with a few stitches and increases as you go. If something is getting bigger slowly, you can stop when it’s big enough. A truly brilliant example of this is a hat knit from the “top down.”
    Ten Times When You Should Worry About Gauge
    If you want your work to be exactly the same (or as close as possible, considering that you changed the neckline, the yarn, and the cable pattern) as the sweater in the picture on your pattern.
    If your bust is 36 inches and you’d like the sweater to be related to that fact in any kind of way.
    If you’re worried about your yarn supply. Different gauges take different amounts of yarn. Even with a scarf for which the gauge element doesn’t matter much, if you’re knitting to a much larger gauge, you may run out of yarn. (I’d tell you how I learned this, but it was so painful that I still can’t speak