This came up in one of my classes last week, and it really can’t be said often enough: If you want your knitting to turn out a particular length/height dimension, don’t measure it! So today I’d love for you to give this post a read: Count, don’t measure. And share it with your friends!
Actually, it’s a great time to just give the whole Hot Tips scroll a read …
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One of my knitting mantras! It come after “you don’t have to swatch, if your willing to frog the whol project or give it away”.
I started doing this when you first posted it, and it has definitely made a HUGE difference in my FO’s. Best advice ever! :)
so true. some yarn is just hard to measure. sometimes you stretch things weird so one piece gets measured with one measurement and the other you may think you have the same measurement til you start seaming…not that that recently happened or anything.
Best Hot Tip of all: Make note of and follow all of Karen Templer’s Hot Tips and your knitting will automatically be elevated. Thanks for this latest gem and for reminding me of your previous equally priceless nuggets of knowledge. <3
I do both and sometimes it STILL doesn’t work!
Knitting is not an exact science and sometimes you just have to frog, no matter how hard you tried! ;-)
I immediately adopted this hot tip when you first posted it and it REALLY changed my knitting life ! How come I hadn’t figured it out before ? Thank you !
Thanks for the reminder of this. I’m in the process of counting rows but mainly due to a change from the pattern gauge into mine. I need to add more rows but how do I adjust the decreases in a raglan without throwing the stitch count right out. The pattern asks for a decrease on every right-side row but if I do this I won’t have the yoke depth. Can I decrease at every 2nd right-side row?
Yeah, you can do whatever you need to do to make your math work out right. I talk about this toward the end of the Improv tutorial section on yokes: https://fringeassociation.com/2013/03/20/how-to-improvise-a-top-down-sweater-part-3-finishing-the-neck-and-yoke/ and there’s further discussion of sweater/shaping math in the next couple of installments after that one.