Hidcote Shawl

[indigodye]

I need some advice from the knitters here. I swatched for my hidcote shawl tonight.. But Im having trouble pinning down which one to go for. I'm leaning towards size 3 needles.

Here is swatch one, done on size 3:

Comments

[lexin]

I like size four. I'm not sure why.

[stacye13]

I like the size 4 also. I think the right side looks better in that one.

[torrilin]

Have you washed and pinned out the swatches? Reason I ask is 3 looks more open in the yarn overs, and *less* dense in the stockinette portion. This is not what I'd expect from the finished shawl.

I'd also try doing a stretch of plain stockinette and add a portion of the edging chart to it. Wash, pin it out, let it dry and see what you think. If the edging is one that's bound off at the edge, it'll give you practice for the finished object.

[indigodye]

Yes, these have been washed and pinned out. I seem to loosen up in my stockinette for some reason.. I need to keep close track of that.

I'll cast on for that swatch today - thank you.

[torrilin]

If you tend to have loose stockinette, I think I'll second the idea of trying smaller needles. And before you feel bad about all this swatching, for my current sweater project, I did a colorwork swatch and *three* different large stockinette swatches to get the right needle size. Oy.

[hottoastermama]

Have you seen Eunny's Majoring in Lace part II? It includes needle size choices for lace.

I have a hard time telling much difference between the 3 and 4 needles, you might want to try two samples with a needle size apart, such as on 3's and 5's, or 2's and 4's to help you decide.

[indigodye]

I've seen that before, but I completely forgot about it, thank you.

I think Ill swatch again with the 3 and maybe try a 2. I thought since maybe no one on Ravelry was using a 2 I was doing something wrong, but maybe that's just the route I need to go. I tend to tighten my YO's and loosen up on ST stitches - I need to work on that one.

[bertha79]

Yeah, these look really similar to me, I couldn't make a definite decision one way or the other from these pics. As is, I *think* I like 4 better, but that might be because it looks more open and it hasn't been blocked yet, which means the 3s would probably look perfect when blocked, whereas the 4s would look too holey.

[rosebranch]

I'm looking at the left side. With the 3s, all of the lace holes are evenly sized and lined up. With the 4s, they're lopsided, and the top holes of each set seem misaligned. On the right side, the lace set on the 3s looks more even as well. This could be a trick of the blocking, but it looks to me like you're more comfortable using 3s (and other than the alignment/sizing, I really don't see much difference between the two).