Gauge again

I've kind of run out of things to talk about because I'm working on a sweater. I've been working hard on it for one month now and guess what, I've just begun it. The easy solution to this paradox is that I've frogged it, not only once, thrice! And I won' be surprised if I have to do it again, although I'm keeping my fingers very crossed hoping I don't.

Why? Well, the first time I frogged it it was because I'd done a silly beginner's mistake, but the two other times were related to gauge. I've written a post on gauge before, but as many experienced knitters can tell you, there is not enough said on this subject. No matter how hard you try following every good advice on swatches, only the final piece will tell what its gauge is.

Some pieces are trivial to gauge, others impossible to predict. This has a lot to do with how stretchy the stitch and how heavy the final piece. Here are some examples to illustrate what I mean:

1. Fair-isle knitting is more tense, that means less stretchy, and therefore holds its shape pretty well. Doing a gauge swatch in pattern is essential, as I mentioned in the previous post, but once you've got the gauge measure, your final piece will not deviate from it too much.
2. Rib stitches (not only the traditional 1x1 and 2x2, but the entire family) are very stretchy in the horizontal direction. Remember the cowl I've mentioned in the my previous post? The one which grew 50%? It was a very large cowl done with chunky yarn (and thus very heavy) and in the round with a kind of rib stitch. Yeah, I'd done a large sized swatch, but even so when I used 6 skeins on the final piece the weight of the piece stretched the rib-like stitch considerably.
3. Garter stitch is very stretchy in the vertical direction. A large cowl or scarf will stretch considerably, which is usually not a very big problem in these pieces, but... read along.
4. Yarns also vary in their ability to stretch... It depends on material and construction. 

The sweater I'm working on right now has a garter stitch yoke. Oh boy!!! And I'm using chunky yarn and it is a large sweater because I'm doing it for a wide-shouldered guy. Oh boy twice!!! So the more my knitting grows, the more it stretches under its own weight. What a nightmare!!! I knit a good chunk, realize I've got too many stitches on my needle, frog it, start again with less stitches, knit a bigger chunk, got it just right when compared with another sweater, go on knitting, check it on the wide-shouldered guy: it is huge!!! What the heck?! Then I realize the sweater has a completely different size when laid on a table on top of another sweater than when hanged on someone's shoulders! Yep, you can believe me. Frog it again. Start it again. This time I'm doing it much smaller, hoping it will stretch to the right size.

All this and I'd actually done a good sized swatch in pattern, washed it and worn it for a while. No kidding! I'd done all of the right things, but I hadn't 'swatched' an entire sweater, only half a sleeve.

When I'm done, I promise I'll make a post with my pattern. The final one, the one which I'm sure is not appropriate for an elephant.