I started work on the cardigan again, and then I tried it on, and now I’m ripping it all up again.

I don’t get it. I made a gauge swatch, and measured and counted it carefully. And when I had knitted about 10–15 cm of the cardigan itself, the measurements still matched up nicely. But after 20cm the cardigan felt a bit tighter when I held it around me. And at 30 cm it was clearly way too tight. I’m going to be making the next attempt with almost 20% more stitches.

I am beginning to suspect that knitted fabric behaves differently when there is more of it in all directions. More stitches are pulling at each other, so it doesn’t relax as much. If that is true, then a smallish swatch – even though I follow the advice I’ve found and make mine at least 15 cm across – is never going to give a true view of gauge for the final thing.

I had the same problem with the previous cardigan. The difference was not quite as drastic, but overall the cardigan still came out smaller than it should have done based on the swatch.

The trouble is, it takes so much time to figure this out! If I get the sizing wrong for a pair of socks, I can remake them in less than a week. With a cardigan, it takes months. And for socks I can reuse my numbers for the next pair. But I don’t plan to knit a pile of identical cardigans, so I will need to redo the work every time I want to make another one. I wonder how many cardigans I have to knit before I finally master this and can produce them with predictable sizing on the first attempt.

The mohair yarn is starting to look the worse for wear. It’s getting uneven. If I have to rip this up one more time, I may have to throw out the used mohair yarn and buy more to replace it. The alpaca yarn (in the photo) is smoother and bears the repeated knitting and unravelling better.