Hello, I’ve been plugging away learning brioche and I’ve finally started my jumper. I had to pull back to a lifeline because I messed up a bit (thanks @salmonmac!) so I’ve only just seen how large it’s going to be and it’s way too big for some reason. I spent ages doing swatches to get the gauge right so I’m baffled. I ended up using needles smaller than the pattern suggested, too. Even if I size down to the smallest size in the pattern it’ll still be far too big
Has anyone got any idea where I could have gone wrong? I’m honestly thinking of casting off and making it into a scarf. It’s 20 cm longer than it should be and that’s just on one side!
I hate it when that happens. It’s probably (or mostly) the stitch pattern. Brioche is very stretchy especially in the width but also a bit lengthwise too. It makes it difficult to measure gauge and even when you get gauge, there’s that inevitable stretch. You may need to go down more than one needle size to make this work.
What is the name of your pattern?
Hi salmonmac! Thanks for coming to the rescue again!
The pattern is called Peony by Emma Wright
I’ve already gone down from 10mm needles to 8mm but I might try 6mm with the same amount of cast of stitches and see how I get on. I don’t have 7mm ones to try. Honestly I just got the giggles when I saw how oversized it was - I’m glad it went wrong because I don’t think I’d have been laughing had I been plugging away at it for another week.
Are you using the recommended yarn? I’ve never seen a brioche garment in bulky yarn. It is so thick & squishy in worsted & even sport yarn, I cant imagine bulky…
The queen of brioche, Nancy Marchant has a pattern I really like, but ultimately I decided not to make it because it takes 3 lbs. of sport weight yarn. I emailed her to see if it was a error & she said no. It really took that much. There is no question in my mind it would have turned out huge (I have problems gauging & things turn out big anyway.). I mean even tho it is very thick & squishy, where is 3 lbs gonna go?
Well, lots of positive ease with this sweater. I can see that I would be working way down on the needle size, probably around a US 10 (6mm) before even making the swatch.
It’s a good looking sweater. Also good that you caught the size problem early so now you know that you’ll need to knit a smaller or smallest size using you current knitting as a gauge swatch. It hurts but good to discover this as early as possible.
