Shaping Neck with Changed Gauge

Hello knitting friends! After 6 months teaching myself to crcohet I’m hopping back into knitting to make this Cap Sleeve Lattice Top: https://www.purlsoho.com/create/2012/05/03/lauras-loop-cap-sleeve

Somehow my gauge has changed and I’m now knitting at 20 stitches/4 inches on a size US 4. I can’t go down enough needle sizes to get the 24 stitches/4 inches the pattern calls for and still have smaller needles for ribbing. Whoops! I’ve calculated out that for a size 36 sweater I can alter it to cast on 91 stitches to meet my gauge. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how many stitches I’ll need to bind off at the neck. My brain is refusing to make sense of the proportional difference. I’ve had to frog it twice now trying to calculate as I go and I have to admit defeat. Can anyone help me figure out the bind off count?

Also, can anyone remind me if this gauge change will need more or less yarn than pattern calls for? I’m thinking less as fewer stitches needed but I don’t trust myself being so rusty!

Thank you :blush:

Welcome to KnittingHelp!
Do you like the feel of the knit fabric in your swatch? Sometimes when you drop down needle sizes the fabric becomes too stiff and tight.
If the swatch feels fine to you then yes, casting on 91sts should work and meet the multiple needed for the mesh stitches. It looks like about 50-53sts bound off will work for the neck. That’s about proportional to the other sizes. You can always hold the partially knit top up to yourself and check that that is correct (not too big to stay on your shoulders or too tight to get your head through).

Here’s a nice discussion of gauge and yarn amounts.
https://yarnsub.com/articles/gauge-and-yardage/
That’s such a cool, summery top.

Gauge is most often given as a ratio. It would includes both
stitches per unit of measure in one row
versus
rows per unit of measure.

The pattern gives decrease sts per row count.

I would think graph paper could be used with you gauge math of both rows per in/cm and sts per in/cm to plot your decrease and give you your custom dec. counts in sts and rows.

It is all about transforming the fractions.

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