Today I have a cautionary tale to share. This is a story about checking gauge.
Last week my free pattern, Hanne, was released in Knitbits. Hanne is a pair of Scandi style colorwork mittens. I used two colors of Berroco’s new Ultra Alpaca Tonal yarn. This is the same worsted yarn as Berroco Ultra Alpaca, but it’s kettle dyed in rich tonal jewel tones and neutrals. I love the way that a tonal yarn gives depth to the simplest colorwork motifs. Ultra Alpaca is a worsted weight, so the mittens work up super quickly on size 4 needles. One skein of each color is enough yardage to knit two pairs of mittens…
which is a good thing, because I had to knit three mittens just to get the one pair. I must have been having a rough week when I started on mitten number 2 because, as you can see, it is significantly smaller than mitten number 1. I really should have caught the mistake sooner – the gauge is way off – but I was knitting with the same yarn, the same set of double pointed needles and didn’t think to measure.
The extra practice must have helped though, I managed to knit the 3rd mitten in a single day!
Has anything like this happened to you?
It looks like you knit three fewer rows (at least) on the one on the left, too. Look at the patterning above the top set of stars.
Sharp eyes Lynne! I did realize as I got to the top that my mitten was too small, I knit the end a little shorter to make it a child size mitten- If I knit a 4th one at the smaller gauge I’ll have a nice pair of child size mittens but I will have to go down a needle size or 2 to match the gauge.
Oh, funny! I hope you’re able to get two pairs out of your mistake!
My (so far only) experiment with twined knitting ended after my first mitten. I obviously hadn’t done a large enough practice swatch – I just made it of a size to measure tension. The beginning of my mitten was a reasonable size, but halfway through my tension changed (presumably I got comfortable with the technique) and the mitten is about three sizes smaller at the fingers than at the palm.