At which I always think 'Duh, what kind of idiot wrote these problems? As if the labs are filled with people playing pin-the-tail on the test tube! What kind of idiot would forget things like that!'.
What kind of idiot indeed?
On the left you see all the swatches I've knit in the past few months when knitting round and round was just about my intellectual limit; on the right are the labels I was supposed to attach to said swatches with needle size, gauge, method and so on (I even knit two of those swatches on the same size needle, one with two circs and the other magic loop to see if my guage varied with technique. I'd like to say it didn't, but who knows?).
To make matters even more befuddling, the one swatch that still has the needle attched comes up at a gauge of 22 st x 27 rows over 2" in Schaeffer Anne. Now I find that the Sock Queen, in the Gentleman's Fancy Sock, knits the same yarn on the same needle at 18 sts and 24 rows to 2". And I always thought I was such a loose woman.
Sigh. One of these days I am going to have to change my byline to 'swatching, and reading about other people's interesting knitting on the internet'.
4 comments:
You could totally combine the two: have you been following Nona's Swatch-a-Day project?
Aurgh...swatches! I know there are all sorts of clever ways to avoid confusion, like doing a row somewhere with the same number of purl bumps as the needle size you're using...but do I ever do that? NO! Nice to know I'm not the only one! :)
Yes, you can certainly tell that problem-solving exercise wasn't written by someone who has actually worked in a hospital laboratory. :-)
Ah labels shmabels. (Oh you wouldn't believe how easy labels become lost or smeared or erased in a lab.) Socks seem to be rather forgiving when it comes to gauge so I wouldn't worry too much. :) I love the swatches though...something about small colorful pieces of knitting fabric.
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