when you have a solid 10 inches of a sleeve as gauge exemplar (i.e., done up to the armhole shaping), and you decide to change the design from 3/4 length sleeves to full-length sleeves (as it's more practical - I don't own many 3/4 sleeve underlayer shirts), and you do all the complicated mapping out of math and when to do increases, and you start again -
suddenly your row gauge is no longer 6 rows per inch but 5 rows per inch???
Sigh.
I am OFTEN often really often guilty of knitting a "swatchette" of about the size of 1" by 1" or so. In those cases, duh, it's not a surprise when gauge issues surface. When I have a sleeve practically done though, except for armhole shaping?
It's a surprise, and not necessarily one of those fun amusing exciting kind of surprises ;)
The straightforward answer is that when the tension level in your LIFE changes, it is reflected in my (um, I mean possibly YOUR) knitting. Which is why I now knit both sleeves at the same time if at all possible.
sigh.
HUGS to you and yours....
Posted by: greta | October 18, 2008 at 04:00 PM
Yeah, that whole gauge swatch thing is a waste of time precisely for this reason. I can empathize with your frustration. Knitting is not an exact science and there is no way to make it so.
Posted by: JoVE | October 20, 2008 at 11:39 AM