Knitting With Tears

There are a few things in life that are inevitable-- death and taxes, of course, but if you're a knitter, you can add gauge to that list. Gauge, and crying over gauge. Gauge is kind of like Karma, only worse. When gauge and Karma gang up on you, you're totally fucked.

I can count the number of readers of this blog on one hand, and I know some of you don't knit. So for the record, gauge is the number of stitches in one inch of knitting. Gauge changes when you change your yarn, needle size, needle type, the color of your underwear, or how you brush your teeth. If you have a glass of delicious and refreshing red wine, your gauge can change. If you are knitting while watching a suspenseful movie, your gauge can change. Sometimes, for no apparent reason whatsoever, your gauge can and will change.

You can thumb your nose at gauge, for years even, blithely knitting up scarves, hats, blankets, Christmas stockings, and all manner of wonderful things. Some may turn out bigger than expected, some smaller, but none of that really matters and you're having a delightful time. Thing is, gauge is critical for a garment that actually needs to fit.

Let's take, for example, my husband's sweater. Just for example. I basically want to knit a 44" circumference tube. I have diligently made my gauge swatch-- a little piece of test knitting-- using my yarn and multiple needle sizes. I have even washed and blocked this adorable little strip of knitting to get a feeling for how much the fabric will stretch out. I decide I like the fabric best at a gauge of 5.5 stitches/inch after blocking. 44 X 5.5 = 242 stitches that I need to cast on. Tra la la.

I am expecting that before I wash the sweater, my gauge will be 6 stitches per inch. 242/6 = roughly 4o. So I know that when I measure the tube, as I will diligently do every few inches or so, it should be 40" around.

Yeah, and monkeys might also fly out of my butt.

This is what happened Monday. I woke up, knit a few rows of the tube, and then slipped all 242 stitches onto a piece of white cotton thread. That way, I can stretch out the tube to it's full dimensions. And measure it. It should be 40", I know this at the very core of my being.

Gauge and Karma. They don't like me. That six inch long tube, which has taken me quite a few hours-- mindless, pleasurable hours, but still, many-- to create, and into which so much thought and homework has gone, measures 44" around.

I know you're following me closely, so you remember that I want a 44" circumference tube. What on earth could be wrong, then? Well, remember the yarn I'm using contains 50% soft, fuzzy, delicious Alpaca fibers, which have all the resilience of a wet noodle. There's only so much the 50% sturdy, elastic wool can do here. It's going to stretch out like gangbusters. My 44" tube (which I knew in the deepest part of my soul should measure 40") is going to end up fitting like those "before" pants in a Jenny Craig commercial.

Sometimes words can't capture a moment:


I briefly flirted with the idea that I could very delicately cut the tube and seam it back together with fewer stitches, then continue on my merry way. I think EZ would approve of this strategy-- remember EZ? Then I came to my senses-- the whole point of making a seamless sweater is to not have to sew, right? There is a time and a place for cutting a hole in your knitting, and this is not it.

The only compensation I had for unravelling 6 inches of sweater was getting to use my favorite new toy, the ball winder. Now I have a cute pile of yarn cakes awaiting my renewed efforts:


I'm sitting down now trying to come up with the reasons my gauge sample betrayed me. Karma and hubris come to mind. It also dawns on me that I knit my gauge sample flat, rather than in the round. I thought of that while I was knitting the flat gauge sample, but I decided that my gauge would probably not change much-- famous last words, as they say.

The good people on Ravelry had many helpful suggestions. My favorite: "Ultimately, your finished work will be your most accurate gauge swatch." Does that mean I have to knit two sweaters for every one that fits? Fuck.

I think I'll start by making some gauge swatches in the round. As soon as I finish crying.

Karmic Retribution

On Friday, I promised to work on being patient and staying positive. I got the night off from work-- sweet! Worked Saturday, and was a paragon of positive attitude and general helpfulness. Sunday, woke up at 2:30PM and went to see Avatar with Eric. I should say, Eric woke me up at 2:30PM. Our movie was at 3, and we were supposed to meet a friend at the theater before the show.

Well, hell if I didn't bitch the whole way to theater because I was worried we would be late. And about the perceived crappiness of our seats. And about missing our friend. I bitched until Eric actually told me to get over it-- and he puts up with a lot, as I've mentioned before. I did get over it. The movie was awesome, we ate delicious pizza afterward, and I apologized on the drive home.

Karma, as they say, is not a nice lady who bakes cookies and watches your cats while you are out of town. Apologies are not good enough for Karma. Today, Karma decided I was going to pay for my little promise to be a better person.

First, a major gauge mishap. I have still not recovered from the aftermath. More on this later.

After the gauge mishap, I went looking for some yarn to swatch for a new project. Positive people don't cry over spilled milk, they just go get more milk! I promised a pair of mittens to Eric's cousin in the annual Christmas Yankee Swap-- what better time to get started?

These will be no ordinary mittens. Said cousin requested black and white patterned mittens. Bring it on! She will get black and white patterned mittens with HOT PINK linings. I bought some yarn-- Louet Gems Fingering-- to get started, but it is a substitution for the yarn called for in the pattern. Since I am both frugal and clever, I decided to make my swatch with some of the same yarn I had left over from another project. If it doesn't suit, I can exchange the unused, newly bought yarn.

Having just set aside the gauge mishap, I went to find the leftover Louet Gems. I keep my yarn stash in a cardboard box. It's not much of a stash, really. But there's some nice stuff in there, including some discontinued Diakeito Diarufuran that Vickie gave me for my birthday, and yarn recycled from two J.Crew cashmere sweaters.

About here is where Karma comes in again. I found the leftover yarn and headed off to play. I got some fabulous toys for Christmas this year-- an umbrella swift and ball winder. It's really really fun to play with these toys. I started winding the leftover yarn on my ballwinder, having fun and thinking happy, positive thoughts in spite of the gauge mishap. About halfway through winding, a tiny little speck of something flew off the yarn and landed on the table. A tiny, wriggling, distinctly larval speck. Mother of God, it was a moth larva. In my yarn stash.

Fuck.

Now, a positive person would probably be thinking that said moth larva was in my yarn stash before I promised to become a better person and then failed two days later. A positive person would also consider that had the gauge mishap not occurred, the moth larva would not have been discovered today. A positive person would inspect the damage (none that I have seen so far), quarantine the affected yarn (in a Ziploc in my freezer), take precautions against future yarnivorous insects (bagging the rest of my yarn in separate Ziplocs, throwing around lavender sachets), and give thanks (on my knees) that the problem was discovered early. Finally, a positive person would revel in the opportunity to organize her yarn stash and tools, make a neat pile of books and patterns that were previously scattered about the apartment, and play more with the ball winder. Whee!

I hope you're watching me now, Karma. I'm staying positive! I'm being flexible! I'm thinking positive thoughts. Positive, moth-murdering thoughts.

The Commitment Sweater

There is a somewhat foolish, but well documented, knitting superstition that you should never knit a sweater for your significant other before you are married or you will break up. One can only imagine the pitfalls for knitters in same-sex relationships, though I guess it would be one more argument in favor of legalizing gay marriage-- as if there weren't enough. And of course, we all know that people never break up after they are married.

Ever since I learned to knit, Eric has periodically mentioned his desire for a sweater. In the beginning, fear of such an undertaking caused me to refuse, but in the past couple of years I admit to feigning belief in the infamous Sweater Curse in an attempt to nudge along a marriage proposal. For shame.

So I have the requisite skills. Now I am legally wed. Hence, the Commitment Sweater. I have been planning this magnum opus since I started becoming confident in my knitting skills, but it didn't begin to really take shape until this fall. I have been searching for just the right pattern and just the right yarn. I have done hours of research on Ravelry. Now I'm ready to start!

Eric is probably unusual among husbands in that he actually likes going to yarn stores. We made a couple of trips together so that I could get a feel for his color and texture preferences. We're both excited about this:

Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Mahogony Mix. Yum.

I always planned to make a seamless sweater-- sewing gives me the willies-- and I had initially decided on a pattern for a top-down raglan. With a 50% alpaca content, my yarn of choice does not behave well at 4.5 stitches per inch, the gauge called for in said pattern. Too much drape, too much stretch. I realized I needed a more open-ended pattern.

Early in my knitting career, my mother bought me The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee. Again, I don't think I was quite ready for the idea of knitting sweaters. Additionally, the sweaters shown in the book have a distinctly 80s look, which might be cool in 2009, but has never been my cup of tea. Sorry Mom.

Flash forward to 2009. I need a sweater pattern that can be adapted to any yarn and any size. At some point I gave away The Sweater Workshop, which teaches you to make such a sweater (crap crap crap). From somewhere in the depths of my memory, I recall the name Elizabeth Zimmermann. Don't tell any knitters that I may have forgotten her name. She's something of a knitting goddess, or was one. In knitting circles, she goes by EZ.

I checked out Knitting Without Tears from the library. I don't feel I can approach a decent description of how entertaining and useful this book is. Besides, many many many people have already done so. In it, EZ describes five ways to make a seamless sweater, using your own yarn and measurements. I say describes, because they aren't really patterns so much as very chatty formulas. This part scares me a bit, because I like the security of a pattern that tells you exactly what to do. But you trust in EZ kind of like you trust in Jesus.

So I'm going to take the plunge today. I already have my gauge sample:

Washed and blocked-- I'm such a good little knitter

Now to cast on 242 stitches!