Knitting Patterns: Gauges

Video Transcript

"Gauge is something that's really important in knitting any pattern, it's actually really critical. And a lot of people look at gauge as a very tedious act that they just don't want to do, a really awful thing. And I've been called the gauge police by friends and family. But what happens is, when a pattern states a gauge, they're telling you that if you knit this piece, getting, say three stitches to the inch in stockinette stitch, that it will come out to be exactly what you see it to be. It will be the measurements no matter what size you make, it's going to come out the way the pattern specified. If you don't knit a gauge, and you just jump right into knitting, you might knit really loose, in which case it'll be much bigger, you might knit really tight, in which case it'll be a lot smaller, and then you'll come to your yarn store and say, "I don't know what I did, why isn't it the right size?", and it goes back to that gauge swatch. So what you want to do is, look at your pattern, and it'll say, gauge, and it'll always say, be sure to take time to make your gauge. So you'll take the yarn that you're going to be knitting with, and the needles that they call for, and you will just make a test swatch. So if they say they're getting 15 stitches to the 4 inches, then you will cast on, say 20 stitches to make your gauge swatch. So, you will do exactly what the pattern said, you would cast on, and we'll just pretend I'm knitting, say those 20 stitches, and you would knit your gauge. Now in a perfect world I'd love you to knit like a 6 by 6 gauge, or even a 8 by 8 gauge, which was recently taught to me. And to knit that gauge, you know, either 4 by 4, or 6 by 6, because by doing that, you're getting a chance to see how it's really going to knit up, if it's going to be the right size. I knit loose, so I always, automatically when I make a swatch, go down a needle size, because I know that no matter what, I am always going to be down a needle size from what they specify. Okay, so you would keep knitting until you get about 4 inches by 4 inches. And then what you will do is, take your yarn off your needles, now it would be a lot bigger than this, and you would be able to measure your gauge for your pattern. Okay, so I'm just going to put this aside. So then, when you measure your gauge, you're going to take your swatch, and you're going to take a gauge measure, and you're going to measure it out."