corrvin | And in which I rant about knitting gauge.

So, every single pattern you can find (at least, the good ones) includes in its instructions a line about gauge.

This means, briefly, how big your knitted stitches are. It will say something like "using yarn A, and needle size B, a 4" x 4" piece of stockinette will have X stitches wide by Y stitches tall."

This is, frankly, the stupidest way possible to describe it. See, here's what happens. You're supposed to cast on some stitches, maybe...say, 30. Knit a square of stockinette bordered by some garter stitch (so it doesn't roll up completely, and so you don't count the edge stitches) and measure it by putting it down on something flat and slapping a ruler on top of it.

The pattern I was looking at has this gauge: 19 stitches by 28 rows. (here)

So, what if you knit 19 wide by 28 high and you get 5" square? Or 3" square? Or, heaven forbid, 5 inches by 3.75 inches? What are you supposed to do? The accepted wisdom is to change needles-- bigger needles to make your swatch bigger and vice versa. Then you measure and try again.

Now, see, what *I* think you ought to do for gauge is this. Knit a swatch 20 stitches by 20 stitches plus a border, using whatever needles make the yarn look good. Measure your 20 stitches. Divide stitches by inches to get your stitch per inch gauge. Multiply by the desired width to get the number of stitches needed. Look at the pattern and see if that number of stitches is ANY size on the pattern. If not, go up or down a needle size and try again.

The problem with some funky "19 stitches to 4 inches" gauge is that if you measure and have 18 stitches, you may think "oh, close enough." But over a 40" sweater, that will leave you with 10 stitches more than you need, or an extra 2". You won't realize that you could, actually, go down or up a size in the pattern, use your SAME needles and SAME yarn, and get a better fit. You'll always be trying to knit to someone else's gauge.

Or buy more needles, or more yarn. Maybe that's the secret...