Do Gauge Swatches "expire?"

#1

I know, weird question…

I am really trying to churn through those UFOs this year. Out of 8 UFOs, I am still working on 3. (Not bad for a month, eh?). :happydance:

One of them is barely even qualifying for a UFO - it’s Paton’s Urban Aran. All I’ve done is swatched. I made the swatches about 3 years ago. I recently got them out and washed & blocked them, but now I’m wondering… could my swatches have expired?

I wonder if my tension has changed in the past 3 years… do you think a swatch has to be recent to be relevant?

#2

I would think one consideration is how long you’ve been knitting. If you’ve been knitting for 20 yrs your tension is probably fairly consistent. If you’ve been knitting for 3 then maybe not.

Personally if had been that long I might just frog and use the yarn for something else. If it’s something you like and you were nearly done though it might be worthwhile to put in a lifeline and just start knitting to see how it looks.

#3

I’d only been knitting about 2 years when I made the swatch, so I think things still could have changed. Oh well, by the time I am ready to tackle this sweater it will probably be too hot here in CA anyway, and I’ll have to leave it for another year! :slight_smile:

I am still slaving away on Lusekofte… very concerned about the finishing on that one!

#4

I knit a sweater…it was awesome…but I decided, after a while that my skills had improved and I wanted to frog it and redo it. I thought to myself…let me just frog down to just below the sleeves (it was a bottom up cardi) and I can fix what I didn’t like about the sleeves…

Nope…My tension and gauge had changed so much…I had to frog the whole thing, and I barely got away with it…as I didn’t have enough mats to finish it again…and I couldn’t get more. shrugs…

I guess what I mean to say is, your gauge can change for many reasons…experience, weather, pain etc. I try not to leave UFOs…I keep one little and one big project on the go at a time…a) to make sure I don’t have loose ends all over the place, but b) to make sure the story above doesn’t happen again…

#5

Cool dragon thingie, Crycket!