Adjusting Your Gauge

Madame has recently noticed an upsurge in the number of people trying to knit patterns they love with yarns they love -- but those yarns don't have the same gauge as the pattern calls for. After discreetly clearing her throat to mask her amazement at the very idea that anyone should be aided and/or abetted in bringing a creative idea to fruition, she generally offers advice along these lines:

There are several ways to adjust a pattern, but by far, the easiest thing you can do is cheat -- First you figure out how many stitches you need to make the size you want, and then you see if there's a size in the directions that tell you to cast on a number of stitches close to the number you need. You then make that size instead of the one you'd make if you had the gauge the pattern specifies.You follow all STITCH directions from the size you're making, and take your LENGTH measurements from the size you want to end up with, OR from a garment you already own that fits the way you want your sweater to fit.

Here's an example:

You want to make a sweater that measures 36" at the underarms, and the pattern you love is written for a yarn that knits up at 4 sts to the inch.

Unfortunately, the yarn you love knits up at 5 stitches to the inch.

At 5 stitches to the inch, you'd need to cast on 180 stitches to make size 36 (multiply your stitch gauge by the number of inches). In reading through the pattern, you see that size 44 tells you to cast on 176 stitches, and size 46 requires a cast on of 184 stitches. You decide whether you want your sweater to be a little more than 35", or a little less than 37" (divide the number of stitches by your stitch gauge) and then you knit that size -- say you decide on size 46.

Since each increment in circumference is generally coupled with an increase in length, you read back and forth between size 36 and size 46. From size 46, you follow ALL the directions that tell you what to do with STITCHES -- how many to cast on, how many to increase, bind off, decrease, etc. Every time the pattern says to knit a certain number of INCHES, you take the number from size 36.

Cheating like this is really easy, and of course, it works in both directions -- you can also knit a pattern at a bigger gauge than the one the directions call for. And you can use it to make sweater in a size bigger or smaller than the sizes provided in the pattern, or you can knit a sweater for an adult from a child's pattern or vice versa.

There are limits of course -- it helps if you to want to knit a small size when you're getting more stitches to the inch than the pattern calls for, and a large size when you're getting fewer stitches to the inch than the pattern specifies. The reason is that if you get 5 stitches to the inch, and the pattern calls for 4, you will have to use MORE stitches to get your size and it's more likely that you'll find a number that works if you want a smaller end product. In the same way, if you want the biggest size, you're better off needing fewer stitches than the biggest size the pattern calls for.

Madame is psychic... she knows you're frowning! Stop it, even though it's confusing, because you don't need those wrinkles in your forehead. Just read it over a couple of times and imagine an accordian getting bigger and smaller... the same number of pleats take up a different amount of space, depending on how closely you pack them together. Now, in your imagination, watch those accordian pleats turn into stitches and you're on your way to understanding the relationship between gauge and final size. All you need now is a monkey with a cup, so that you can collect enough money to pay for the yarn!