Some of you may be wondering* “What happened to that Fireworks Festival shawl you were so excited to start?”
Gauge happened. Or rather, didn’t happen.
Normally, I’m a bit slap-dash about shawl gauge. If the fabric looks good, I’m happy. But this pattern is pretty dependent on finishing the whole thing as written, and I have exactly the yardage called for. After the near miss with the Tuva’s Arrows where I pretty well ignored the total amount called for, skipped a gauge swatch, and had to bind off in another color, I don’t want to risk it. I’m going for the recommended gauge.
Now, it calls for a 3.75mm (US 5), and I, against all odds, am a loose knitter. Given that I can be a control freak perfectionist and tend towards being overly anxious about all sorts of things, I would have guessed myself to be a tight knitter. Respect for my hands and an aversion to subjecting them to clenching apparently outweighs my other personality traits.
So, I went straight for a 3.5mm (US 4). My gauge was very much not right and the fabric was floppy, which is extra unattractive in brioche. Then… despair. Ok, annoyance and frustration maybe. My next long needle down was still a 3.25mm and I was pretty sure that wouldn’t cut it. My 3mm is already in use. I was faced with the need to buy a needle. And last Saturday I was away all day at the Green Bag Lady group. So I didn’t think I could get to a yarn store until tomorrow.
Then today I realized I wasn’t properly thinking things through! The gauge calls for 16st/4in in brioche. This is really something sort of like 32st/4in in stockinette, since each brioche stitch is kinda two normal stitches. Now, for socks I generally get about 8.5/9 st to the inch on size 2mm (US 0). You might think that maybe a 2.25mm (US 1) would be good. But one brioche stitch probably sits somewhere between two stockinette and two 1×1 rib stitches. And I do have a 2.5mm (US 1.5) needle with a 40in cord!
I cast on and tried again:
So far, so good. Obviously, I’ll make my swatch bigger than this. So far, I’m getting more stitches per inch on the row gauge, but I like the fabric and I also need to wash and block it. I am frankly slightly terrified of this – what if the colors run? But I know I really need to find out before I start knitting the shawl if I need to abandon this project because the colors don’t play nice. Fingers crossed…
*Honestly, I’m pretty sure you aren’t, but it’s a good literary device to open a blog post.