Mojo-seeking Olympic thrill rides

In an effort to find some good knitting mojo, I've decided to try the Knitting Olympics this year. I'm going to make a February Lady Sweater out of some black filatura di crosa slightly odd wool in my stash. I think the wool will actually really suit the pattern. It's very bouncy, but it has a particular spin which makes it warp when knit in stocking stitch. So I'm going to give it a go in garter stitch.

I have so far knit a swatch. It's 28 stitches across and 54 rows (including the cast on and cast off, which were done in without any attempt at cleverness, but consciously loosely). Before I washed the swatch it was slightly under 6 inches square. I was willing to live with that; it was 19 stitches per 4 inches instead of 18 stitches. I was going to make the 37.5" version of the sweater which would leave me enough leeway if the gauge was a bit tight in the end. I knit it using my trusty 5mm metalic blue circular needles.

I washed it today and it grew and grew and grew and GREW. I seriously had to squish it together to get it to be 6.5". I think that it would much rather be more like 7". It's now telling me that it wants to be 16 stitches to 4 inches, which is a serious enough deviation from the goal that I am now thinking of trying again with smaller needles.

So, this is a big thing for me. I rarely "get gauge". I find that if I throw instead of pick, I get closer, and this time I thought I got close enough. But clearly I did not. I am so very, very VERY glad that I tried washing the swatch. That's something I know I should do, but I haven't ever seen the dramatic change that this yarn produced. Important lesson. Will I remember it?

It's also a rare occasion when I remember to leave enough yarn to try Maggie Righetti's trick of tying a number of knots equal to the needle size on the tail. Now I have a permanent record of what size needle I used, rather than having to look it up somewhere. That is, as long as a) I can remember the conversion to US needle sizes and b) I am actually using a size that comes in US numbers.

It also unravelled in the washing. The tails are quite undone. I am interested by that. I'm sure it's related to how much it grew.

I'll try another swatch in a smaller needle. I want to be casting this puppy on come Friday night. I hope I can "get gauge" by then.