6th graders recently have been working on hand knitting, developing their vocabulary and skills with this versatile textile structure. They are starting to work with a knitting machine and will be designing and knitting some hats. The machine is non-electric and fully mechanical, operated independently by students. How does each student know what size to make? We measure! We knit what’s called a gauge swatch and measure the number of stitches (horizontal) and rows (vertical) in a 10cm sample. After reducing that number to 1cm, we plug in the information to find out how many stitches to cast on and how many rows to knit. There is a lot of applied math in knitting and we take full advantage of everything students have learned over the years in the classroom!