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Showing posts with the label gauge swatch

Well a women has the right to change her mind…

How many times have you bought all of the supplies for a project to knit, and then changed your mind about the yarn, or pattern? This seems to happen to me all too often. The above was a purchase several years ago. Somewhere along the line I decided I didn’t want to use the pattern I bought. I think it was due to the fact that I detest knitting a sweater in separate pieces and putting it together. I love to knit in the round. I discovered this after finding my first Elizabeth Zimmerman book, Knitting without Tears ! Her techniques and insistence on swatching for your gauge, turned me into a super sweater knitter. Her patterns were the first I could actually wear! Usually I would have to gift my knitted sweater to someone, anyone that was the size the sweater was. And while this had a certain excitement, and drama, I actually wanted a sweater for myself. Elizabeth's in depth explanation of gauge and how to calculate your size, finally made me realize how important gauge was, and

Dominiknitrix, gauge swatch

The Dominiknitrix . I bought this book after hearing someone (sorry I forgot who) on a podcast recommend it. It does empower you to knit. It actually changed my view on knitting/quilting (or anything really). Yes I CAN knit this. Jump in and learn and master. She has many good tips on simple things also. Gauge swatches, who loves them? I had been gauge swatching for years, and using the (I believe Elizabeth Zimmerman) technique of knotting the tail of my yarn with the number of knots to correspond the size of my needle that I used, Dominiknitrix suggests that we knit several rows, then purl (or use your pattern stitch) then knit the corresponding number of stitches of the needles that was used. I like this technique better and it gives a lot of info on the gauge of various kinds of stitches, after washing, you get a wide variety of ideas of what is going on with your yarn. From oops...it runs, looks crappy in this pattern, is a general pain, oooo I love it!!, this is it!!! This is just