Gauge Hell

So I spent this last Saturday with my two bestest friends (Yes, you know who you are), and even found a home for the Dibs on Ribs sweater that has been the cause of so much knitterly angst. Turns out that while I thought I was making myself a birthday present, the sweater knew it was being made for my friend Jessica. It looked hideous on me - gorgeous on her. Such is life.


Anyway, Jessica's birthday is coming up in July, so when she was looking through my Interweave Knits magazines and decided she loved the Prairie Tunic from the Spring issue, I thought "why not?" I had a good cotton yarn substitute that was going to be another Eris sweater before I realized that cabling REALLY makes me want to set my needles on fire, I had the proper size needles, and how much work could a tank top be?

So I did a sort of vague gauge check (this, dear readers, is where the Jaws theme song should start playing in your head) and went ahead knitting. Did I mention this top is knit on size three needles? Several rows in, it occured to me that this piece (the back half) was looking, well... slightly... large? We were going for a length of 21 inches (IIRC) and we had 28. So I took a second look at the yarn, realized that I had utterly perfect row gauge, and decided to knit two sizes down and just see what happened. Instead of 21 inches, I had 25.

I know the good knitters here are snickering at my lack of proper swatching, which would no doubt have saved me 4 hours of super teeny stitches, and I thus hang my head in shame. I have learned my lesson:

I'm knitting the smallest size possible and hoping for the best. *ducks to avoid needles being thrown at her head*




Eris says: Mom, I think you're a few inches off.