From long experience, I know that I’m a loose knitter. Uh, let me rephrase that. I know that I knit fairly loosely, because I pull on the yarn with hardly any force at all as I form each stitch. For worsted weight, I typically use a size 4/3.50 mm needle to get the typical 5 spi.
Tag Archives: Needle size
Swatching: General Considerations
Yes, the s-word. Most of us don’t like swatching, because it feels like a waste of time. In some cases, it probably is. There are plenty of projects that don’t need swatching, as long as we’re willing to live with the consequences. Shawls and scarves don’t need swatching, unless we’re concerned about yarn chicken or really want the FOs to be a particular size or have a particular drape. Even hats, gloves, and mittens don’t need swatching, if we’re willing to find heads or hands that will fit in them—and if we’re not super-concerned about the warmth of the items if our fabric is a little looser that it ought to be.
How Big Is Your Paint Brush?
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.
Let’s consider now that you have no two-inch brush, that all you have is a roller. Oh, and you’re out of tape, too. And no stores are open.
How hard is it going to be for you to do a nice, clean edge along your doors, windows, baseboards, and ceilings? Imagine trying to roll along all the trim without slopping any paint onto the wood. You might stick it out for a door or window or wall, but I expect you’re simply going to stop until you can adjust the tool you use.
And ceilings? Oy. Even with a cut-in edge, I frequently hit the ceiling when I’m rolling the walls.
On the other end of the scale, would you try to paint an entire room with a two-inch brush? Nope.
Why not? Because the tools don’t fit the tasks.
How does this little example relate to knitting?
The second scenario doesn’t come up very often in knitting. If you’re desperate, because you dropped your US size 17/12 mm needle somewhere between the front door and the sideline at the kids’ soccer practice, you might piddle a few rows using a pencil you found underneath the passenger seat in your futile search for the needle. You have to pull each new stitch’s loop a bit longer, because the pencil isn’t nearly as big around as a 17. But you’ll make do.
The first scenario, on the other hand, is more common than I like to think about.
Using a big roller to do very detailed painting tasks is exactly what so many new-ish knitters struggle with when they try to use the needle size recommended on the ball band or in the project instructions. In the same way that using a big roller doesn’t work well along untaped moldings and uncut edges at the ceiling, big needles can make it hard for loose slack non-tight knitters to get gauge.
For me to get five stitches per inch (twenty stitches per ten cm) in worsted weight yarn, I have to use…a US size 4/3.50 mm needle. Worsted weight ball bands often suggest using US size 5–8/3.75–5.00 mm to get that gauge. Can you imagine how hard I’d have to pull the yarn to get gauge on a size 8/5.00 mm? I’d practically have to strangle the needle with the yarn, and I’d last about twenty stitches before I got massive cramps in my fingers, arms, and shoulders.
It’s so much easier, and more relaxing, and of course not at all cramp-inducing, for me to use a smaller needle to get that gauge. ’Cause I’m a loose knitter, and proud of it.
If you’re having trouble getting enough stitches per inch/10 cm, don’t be afraid to go down a needle size. Or two. Or three. Or whatever it takes.
Next time I paint, I won’t be using a roller around all the trim, either, even if it is taped off.
The Needle Size to Get Gauge
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’m in no way suggesting you use your project history to skip making a gauge swatch, as annoying as making gauge swatches usually is. I’m simply making the point that knowing your typical gauge in various weights of yarn will help you get knitting faster.
What Will Happen When Your Project Gets Wet?
Why can’t you skip swatching? Because we can never tell how a specific yarn will react when it gets washed.
One yarn I absolutely love changed width quite a bit when I washed it. I swatched by casting on and knitting about 4 inches on the sleeve, to both give me a swatch and to see if the patterns were more trouble than they were worth. The patterns were OK, but the sleeve diameter went from 3.625 inches before washing to 4 inches after–an expansion of just over 10 percent. That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that a 40-inch sweater would wind up being 44 inches around instead!
Record a Blocking-Proof Needle Size Directly in Your Swatch
I first saw this tip on page 141 of Maggie Righetti’s Sweater Design in Plain English (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990).
1 knot = 2.00 mm
2 knots = 2.25 mm
3 knots = 2.50 mm
4 knots = 2.75 mm
5 knots = 3.00 mm
6 knots = 3.25 mm
7 knots = 3.50 mm
8 knots = 3.75 mm
9 knots = 4.00 mm
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.
If You Make an Individual Swatch for Each Needle Size
This technique will work for any fabric, from garter and stockinette to very complicated patterns.
Leave a longish cast-on tail, and tie a series of simple overhand knots in it, with the number of knots matching the needle size.
Size 5 for this swatch? Tie five overhand knots in the cast-on tail. Size 7 for that one? Use seven knots.
If you use metric needle sizes, then you’ll have to deal with half and even quarter millimeters. For 3.25 mm needles, you could do three knots very close together for the number of whole millimeters, with a fourth knot a little way away to represent the quarter millimeter. For 3.50 mm, you could do two groups: one with three knots close together plus a group of two (one for each quarter of a millimeter) far enough away that the knots don’t look like a single group of five. (And you’ll have to be consistent about which group is closest to the swatch and which is closest to the free end of the tail.)
If you frequently use the smaller metric-size needles, which go in 0.25 mm increments from 2.00 to 4.00, you could also just make a cheat sheet for yourself: