How I learned to stop worrying and love the gauge swatch...

So, Swan, I know you check out You Knit What? an awful lot; I do every day. I don't want to miss a moment of the extreme fug going on there. Well, someone commented on today's (Sunday, July 2) that we are apparently having a theme of anatomy lessons, and include links to a knitted digestive system and uterus. I think that's just great, so, I thought I'd share a little story with anyone who may be reading (but not you, as I know you may remember this story).

When the roomie was preggers with Walter, I really wanted to make some booties. As a knitter of, oh, 5 months at the time, I did not respect the gauge swatch. I was certain that since I had "gotten gauge" on a blanket and scarf before, I'd be fine with something I expected anyone to actually wear. Please note: blankets and scarves do not necessarily need a rigid gauge achieved. If they are inches off, who gives a crap? Well, I was young and impulsive, what can I say? So, I figured I always get gauge! I can just make whatever I want by reading a yarn label and "adjusting" whatever the hell I feel! And I cast on One Hour Booties from SnBN without looking back. I think at the time, I also figured it was only an hour out of my life if it came out crap, but I'm sure some part of me was cocky enough to hope.

I didn't use the recommended yarn or needles, what was I thinking? I didn't swatch up anything at all, what was I thinking? The bootie came out too huge for any human baby to ever wear, but still not so big that I thought it a total waste of yarn and frogged it. Maybe I thought it would block out, hah! So, after much toying around with the stupid bootie, I ripped out the seaming and hurled it across the room. Towards Yoshi, who didn't seem to understand why I'd cry over my "relaxing hobby". He took one look at it and then put it on a certain part of his, ahem, male anatomy. I laughed my ass off, let me tell you. I then measured him around the waist and added a crochet chain "waistband" where the back of the cuff should seam, and a small crochet chain, hmmm, somewhere else, to go over, hmmm, something else.

I made crotchless panties for men, y'all. He slipped his willy through the loop and put his boys in the bootie. The best part was the fuzzy baby yellow color. On his crotchless panties. Which he wore only once and for about twenty seconds (to his credit).

Yoshi is now, I am sure of it, very grateful that this post has no pictures.

And I have always, always done my gauge swatch from then on. I even have a philosophy about it which I will save for next post, where we learn that there are no gauge swatches.