So I know you don’t want to knit a swatch and check your gauge (or at least most of you don’t, most of the time, for most projects). And I also know that getting gauge is how you make a knitted thing come out the size you want it to be, and that some knitted things really do need to be a specific size to be fit for purpose.

These two truths exist in eternal tension.

And I’ve mostly come to terms with that. Mostly…more or less…most of the time. Because there doesn’t seem to be any other choice, and worrying about what other folks do with their leisure time activities is not a good use of my time on this earth.

But, on the off chance that maybe just maybe if we make it a little easier to check your gauge, then maybe just maybe a few more folks will occasionally do it and save themselves the dread horror of ripping back three quarters of a hat when it turns out to be better suited to a pumpkin than a human head, I made a thing!

I made some little gauge cards. They’re the size and thickness of a credit card. You plop them on your knitting and wiggle them around and find the row where one stitch fills up one square of the little grids. Then you look at the label on that row and you have you a good idea of your gauge.

Now, is this as good as knitting a six inch gauge swatch, washing it the way you intend to wash your finished knit, blocking it the way you intend to block your finished knit, and carefully measuring your gauge down to the quarter stitch across a solid four inches of fabric (being careful to avoid the fabric right at the edge because that’s often got a different gauge)? Nope! Are most people going to do that whole thing for most projects? Also nope.

Does setting a little card on top of your knitting and taking fifteen seconds to see what gauge your getting sound a lot more manageable than that whole process up there? Yup. Is it going to be more accurate than glancing at your fabric and going ‘eh, I mean it’s probably around 6ish stitches per inch I guess?’ Yup. Yup it really is.

And sometimes making it easy to get just one tiny step closer to some seemingly impossible ideal has a surprisingly big impact! And I think these might make it easy to get one tiny step closer to that sort of ideal gauge checking process that so very few of us are ever going to pull off. Which is why I think they deserve a place in your knitting bag!

Now for the tricky bit…I had thought I’d be telling you about these and saying ‘hey, they’re going in the kits with the bags if you want one.’ But y’all were speedy and sold out all the bag kits before I even had a chance to talk about them (which, cool, and also wow).

I’m definitely planning on including them in future kits. And I’m working on setting something up for folks who want the scissors and cards and yarn and patterns, and I’ll have more about that next week. But for right this minute, there’s not actually a place to get them. But if they’re something you think would be useful, let me know, and I’ll see what we can dream up!