I did a stockinette swatch of Gayle’s sock yarn today on my size 2 bamboo dpns. I’m getting about 30 stitches to 4 inches, which is a little small, so I’m going to need to do some monkeying. I don’t know whether to knit a little looser, or go up a size in my needles. Considering I don’t have any size 3 dps in bamboo, and I don’t feel like knitting with aluminum, I’m probably going to try to knit a little looser. If it were a big change I was going for, I know I could do it, but two tiny little stitches over 4 inches isn’t enough of a difference to drastically change the feel of my tension. I can knit different gauges with the same needles easily, and maintain tension within a garment. My hands just kind of “get it” from the tension they feel inserting into a stitch on the needle, and it all works out. The problem I have is going from one piece to another like, say, from one sock to another, or one glove to another…..

This is one in a pair of the first gloves I’ve ever knit. I fell in love with the pattern the instant I saw it, came home and told my hubby, and a couple weeks later, this was sitting under the Christmas tree, wrapped all pretty, accompanied by some beautiful red lace yarn, and one of those steel turbo circular needles. It is a beautiful book. There’s another pattern in this book that I have completed. It took me 5 1/2 months to finish, but I’m saving that show and tell for another day. :-).

So, back to the gloves…..

I didn’t even mess with the pattern. Aren’t you proud? I stuck to it, by the letter. They are beautiful, and I love them. The problem is that one of the gloves is significantly larger than the other. They still fit nice, and no one can tell unless I hold my hands together and make them look. At that point though, it is obvious.

I don’t know what my problem is. I can maintain gauge beautifully within a piece, but piece to piece, I almost have to swatch all over again. Maybe I should just start the next piece immediately after finishing the last, which I never do. Sometimes it’s because I like to take a break and knit something different for a couple days. And sometimes, if I’ve stayed up way late because I was “so close” to finishing, I just go to sleep when I’m done. Since the glove experience, I pay much closer attention to gauge when starting the second sock, or a sleeve to a sweater, etc.

Coming full circle now, I’ve found a couple lace sock patterns I’m thinking about using to knit up Gayle’s yarn in. It’s all about lace recently. It is so fun, I can’t help it.