A Lesson on Gauge

I have been practicing my continental knitting on a scarf which I started in December of 2013 and I finally finished it yesterday.  Yay!  As I pulled the scarf off the needles and held the two ends together, I was a little shocked…  look at the difference in my gauge between the part I knit last year and my gauge now!

The left side of the picture is my cast on edge which I did 14 months ago and the right side is the part I just recently finished.  Pretty crazy, huh?  I think the big difference is that (a) I changed the way I hold the yarn and (b) I got much faster.

I actually prefer the gauge on first half of the scarf – I think it looks much neater.  As I was speeding up near the end, my gauge got a little uneven and is much looser than I like.  I think I need to experiment more with finding the right hold that will give me enough tension to knit tighter stitches, but hopefully enough give to knit quickly.