The past month (or so, I’ve been lax in posting all the things) has
been a month of a lot of knitting firsts for me and I thought I’d share
them with you. Because I got long winded, I’m going to do these as a series
of posts.
So…we shall begin with…
The First First: Knitting Class (and tangentially … sock)
Because I’m the sort of person who thinks to herself “but why
shouldn’t I do it the most awesome and hard way possible on the first
try instead of easing into a thing”, I decided that for the femme Fifth
Doctor costume I’m working on for a con upcoming in July (and then
another one in August and then office Halloween in October) I should not
only knit a vest
(which is done and I really need to post photos of it but haven’t)
which is easy and I KNOW how to do and will be nbd, and sew a skirt
which is using a pattern I’ve already sewn and love and is also nbd, I
should also knit myself socks. Knee high socks. Knee high T.A.R.D.I.Socks.
I made this decision at the end of April and then told myself that
before I could cast on said knee high socks I had to finish the mittens
of repeated epic fail (more to come once that situation sorts itself
out) and also my SO’s cardigan.
Which, as previously discussed, took me until the middle of May. So I
somehow decided that between May 15 and July 3 I would finish the half
completed vest, sew a skirt, also knit another sweater that I wanted to
make for a trip I have on July 9, and knit knee high socks that by all
reports take experienced sock knitters months to years to do because
they are SO DAMN ENORMOUS. Oh, and did I mention I’ve never knit a sock
before in my life and while I conceptually understand that socks have
heels and toes and legs and feet I don’t have a clue about how to adjust
that to fit my actual heel or toe or leg or foot? Did I also mention
that these socks are toe up and leave most of the adjusting to the
knitter? They are.
Which brings me to my first first … my first knitting class. In a timely fashion, my LYS
sent me an email that they were having a “knit a sock” class for the
first two weeks of May. I’d never taken a class there before, but I
learned to sew by taking classes so I figured what harm could it do.
Granted this was a cuff down sock on two circular needles using worsted
weight yarn and not a toe up sock with patterning and self-adjusting on 4
dpns, but at least I could understand the basics of sock mechanics.
Hopefully. The short answer was, I found the people in the class not
that awesome (much discussion that made me cringe at the levels of fail
on various levels) and the teacher was distracted at best and almost no
one but me actually made any progress or seemed to understand knitting
in the round, but the materials I received and the comprehensive
instructions on how to figure out what size your feet were and how the
parts of the sock went together accordingly were hugely helpful. And at
the end of it all I had a sock. Just one, but a sock no less. I want the
cuff to be longer, but I ran out of time, so I’ll probably end up
ripping it out and making it taller ( which can wait until closer to
winter because worsted weight wool socks in the summer are just … no),
but I have a sock.
So there you have it. My first class and my first very plain, very boring, ultimately well fitting sock.
Halfway through a lace pattern I learned I do yarn overs backwards.
Whatever. It looks awesome.
I know that swatching is a contentious topic with a lot of knitters.
When I first started knitting (listen to me, I talk as though I’ve been
doing this for 20 years), I didn’t make swatches, but that was because no one told me to do it!
Honestly, when I learned to knit I made a garter stitch scarf and
then a basic hat and some mittens and it was all in a class with
sufficient hand-holding and it worked out great.
Then, because I’m not the sort of person who sees a utilitarian usage
for more than the 5 hats and 15 scarves I already owned BEFORE I
started knitting, I realized that if I was going to make things for
myself (and dammit, I was going to make things for myself) they were
going to be sweaters. Which is cool. I love sweaters. My sweater shelf
(and the dresser in which I keep other sweaters) is overflowing. And
exactly none of the sweaters on my shelf were knit by me.
That’s right. 3+ years later, I still have never knit myself a wearable sweater.
Now, I don’t say that I haven’t knit myself a sweater, because I
have. Three of them, in fact. The problem is, all the sweaters I’ve made
myself are in the bin (lbr, cardboard box) of things that don’t fit.
Why is that? Well … partially, it’s because I use acrylic yarn in
inappropriate ways, but also it’s because of swatching.
Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take the time to knit something
gorgeous so you can have a beautiful piece of whatever, you sort of need
to make sure that you’re knitting it to the right size, and if you’re
following a pattern (or if you’re making up a pattern) you need to know
what that size is. So … it’s important in my hat making, for instance,
that I know how many stitches to the inch I’m getting so I end up with
hats that are the right size for human heads (accidentally knitting on
US5s instead of US3s aside). The only way to do that is to figure out
how many stitches I knit per inch. Cool? Cool.
I actually first did a swatch when I wanted to substitute a yarn in a
pattern. The yarn wasn’t the weight the pattern called for (but was the
right fibre, so I thought the drape/shaping would be similar), so I
needed to figure out what I needed to do in order to get gauge. Here’s
the thing … that sweater STILL doesn’t fit. (That’s a wholly frustrating
experience because a LOT of math was involved in that ish, and I’m
super annoyed that it’s too SMALL, of all things. But that’s for another
time, since I spent way too much on that yarn to *not* rip it out and
try again.) For a while I just dumped the sweater in my box of shame and
let it languish (not as long as the one I have to fix BEFORE that one
because I made it before I knew how to swatch at all. It’s coat length,
too. Delightful.), but since I’ve been listening to podcasts, I’ve
gotten some insight that seems ever so obvious.
Wash your swatches.
That’s right. Wash your swatches. Wash them the way you would wash
whatever you are knitting with that yarn. Because here’s the thing,
right. I spend all this time swatching away to try to get the right
gauge so that my garment fits, and then I wash it and block it and
sometime in my blocking process I either realize that this sweater is
either WAY bigger than I thought it was or it’s WAY smaller than it’s
supposed to be. Why? Because the yarn is relaxing.
The podcast I got this from (they touch on it in several episodes,
and I have no idea which one they really talk about it the most in …
sometime in 2008-2009 is the best I can give you) is the Knit Picks
podcast. There’s one episode where Kelley really explains what goes on
in your fibre from the time it leaves the sheep until you wash it that’s
really enlightening. The thing to remember is that even after it’s put
on a skein and then wound into a ball and then knit into an object, the
fibre is still all tense. It’s been through a lot. Once you get it in
the water and let it just hang out and then let it dry on its own, it
relaxes into the shape it wants to take … which is rarely the shape it
had when it was on your needles. This, in turn, means the gauge you so
painstakingly worked to get is now WRONG.
Solution: Wash your swatches, check your gauge again.
I recently did this with the swatch of Malabrigo Rios I showed you a
few days ago. I knew I needed to get 18 stitches and 20 rows to 4”. So I
knit up a swatch of 24x24 on US7 needles, did a few rows of garter to
separate, then did it again on US8. I measured the gauge, and both were
close (the 8 was closer), but neither was right. Ordinarily, this would
have been super frustrating for me (and probably included swearing
followed by me trying to recalculate the pattern math (incorrectly, lbr
here) to get the sweater to match my gauge). But! Because of the
podcast, I didn’t panic. I put the end caps on my circs, then tossed the
swatch in a sink full of cold water with the tiniest bit of soap, let
it soak for 5 minutes, rinsed it, and set it down on the blocking board
and pulled it out so it was almost flat. That evening, it was fully dry
and I measured gauge again. Turned out … size 8 was perfectly on gauge
and now I’m happily knitting along on a delightful sweater.
The magic of the properly executed gauge swatch.
