I am totally serious. How big a paint brush do you use for different painting tasks?
You use a roller for large areas, and you use perhaps a two-inch brush for getting close around door frames, window frames, baseboards, and ceilings. (And if you’ve never tried the one with the bristles cut at an angle, you’ve been missing out.) Nothing revolutionary or unexpected here.
Gauge is very important, yet it isn’t important at all.
Gauge determines how big your finished project will be. That’s probably what most knitters think of.
But gauge also determines the feel of the fabric: how it drapes, if at all. Projects worked very tightly will have much less drape than those worked more loosely. That means tight-gauge garments will be stiff and less body-conforming when worn. On the other hand, tightly worked projects make good tote bags.
Please, oh please, do not feel compelled to get gauge using the needle size listed in the pattern or on the yarn’s ball band.
This is one reason to keep extensive notes of your projects. You’ll be able to look back and see that for worsted-weight yarn, you almost always use a size 4 needle to get five stitches per inch in stockinette stitch (which is what I almost always need, even though most projects and ball bands recommend size 5 to size 8). If your next project in worsted-weight yarn suggests a size 6 needle to get 5 sts/in in stockinette, you can be pretty confident that your trusty size 4 is what you’ll really need.
I first saw this tip on page 141 of Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990).
It’s also on TechKnitter’s blog.
The genius of these methods is that they will survive whatever technique you use for blocking the swatch.