frustrated before the project starts

Yep, I’m talking about the sweater I’m wanting to make.  I finally got the 3.00 mm and 3.25 mm circular interchangeable needles in, all the way from Europe:

When they came in yesterday, I set about immediately making the gauge swatches for my sweater, and what do I find out?  I need bigger needles than these, and I’ve had the bigger sizes the whole time.  I can’t believe that I went through all the trouble to find these and spent money on them, only to find that they don’t work.  The pattern calls for the 3.00 mm needles (or even smaller ones, which I couldn’t find at all), but I’m gonna have to give the gauge swatch another try with bigger needles.  Perhaps I should have tried the bigger needles before ordering the smaller ones, but how was I supposed to know that my gauge would be way off?  Anyway, here are my two unsuccessful gauge swatches:

Luckily for me, I have the KnitPro app on my iPhone, which tells me exactly what I need to do.  In addition to the gauge calculators (in both metric and inches), the app also has a yarn substitution calculator, a needle/hook size chart, as well as a ton of information on ease, yarn weight, and fiber content.  Definitely worth the small price for the app.  You can read more about this app on The Sweaty Knitter‘s blog.  This is what it looked like when I entered in my gauge swatch information (for the 3.00 mm needles, using the size small bust circumference measurement):

And this is what it told me:

Pretty sweet, huh?  And yes, I washed and dried the swatches before measuring them, just to be safe (I don’t think they changed at all).  So I’ll make another gauge swatch with bigger needles and see if that helps.  If I have to go up too many needle sizes I may just use one of the smaller ones and just make the pattern for a size medium sweater instead of size small.

In any case, I have some more swatching and measuring  and calculating to do before I can actually get started.  I’m off to go do that.

Thanks for stopping by!