Knitting Rules! by Stephanie Pearl–McPhee Page B

will fit in the same space. Use a SMALLER needle.
    If you have MORE stitches to the inch than the pattern calls for, you need to make the stitches BIGGER so fewer will fill the same space. Use a BIGGER needle.
    I’d feel guilty about telling you something so obvious, but when it’s late at night, it’s your third swatch, nothing is working, and you’re fraying at the edges, it can be really helpful to have the rule written down in black and white. In the heat of gauge battle, things are forgotten.
    Now take the measuring tape and deal with row gauge.
Row gauge
is how many rows of knitting (measured up and down) fit in the prescribed area, and it’s also the bane of many a knitter’s existence. Knitters are forever getting stitch gauge only to realize they don’t have row gauge, knitting a new swatch that gets row gauge but not stitch gauge —only to want to run themselves through with a knitting needle because they think they’ll never get both. It’s a problem.
    Given a choice between getting stitch gauge and getting row gauge, take stitch gauge every time. Row gauge is easier to compensate for; just add a few rows or decrease a few. You should still try to get gauge on both; I’m just saying that if you must choose, you’ll be less likely to want to feed your own ears to a wild boar if you settle for stitch gauge.
MORE THAN MEASURING
    A swatch is not just about gauge, and it’s not the only reason to knit one. (Although you have to admit that gauge disasters being so frequent, gauge alone is a pretty good reason.) Knitting a swatch is also like a first date between knitter and yarn. You get to know each other, you converse, you see how the yarn behaves when you handle it, you discover if it’s soft or harsh, you decide whether the pattern you’ve picked is right for this individual yarn. You begin to get a sense of the potential your relationship holds: is it a keeper? Or are you going to have to dump it faster than a 42-year-old man with an action-figure collection and his mommy on speed-dial.
FOUR THINGS TO DO WITH ALL YOUR SWATCHES
    Put them in a knitter’s journal with project notes underneath.
    Use them as coasters. (Work with me.)
    Save them up to make a blanket of all the different squares sewn together.
    Keep them in a box in the closet, intending to sew them up, but don’t. Every time you clean the closet, take them out, feel guilty that you haven’t done it yet, and put them back in. Repeat for 20 years, then — maybe — throw them away.
DENIAL AIN’T JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT
    (A Cautionary Tale for Knitters)
    My friend Emma recently knit a sweater, or, to be precise, my friend Emma recently intended to knit a sweater. She took her hand-spun and an appropriate pattern and launched. Now, Emma is what I would call a typical knitter with a side of independence. She’s conscientious when it comes to her knitting: She knows and understands the ways of the swatch and respects the mojo of the swatch. I’ve watched her swatch. Emma understands, as most thoughtful knitters do, that even though swatches are an imperfect system, they’re all we have.
    Emma knew all of this, and even though she wanted a sweater that would fit, she maintained she didn’t mind being messed over if gauge didn’t work out quite right. She was feeling flexible. If she had to rip back, so be it. No problem. Like millions of knitters before her, Emma understood that in simply beginning a sweater, even though thousands of patterns had warned her not to,even though millions of knitters have suffered before her, even though the first page of every knitting book is about knitting a swatch, she was turning her back on gauge, predictability, and the mysteries of tension, and instead accepting consequences, hours of possible reknitting, and yet another funny-looking addition to the wardrobe of sweaters that are in the “sack” family of