Machine Knitting - How to knit a tension piece for the coloured rulers

This video shows how to knit a tension piece to be measured with the green ruler, supplied with the Silver Reed standard gauge knitting machines.

It is actually inaccurate to call these rulers, they should be referred to as scales, because they don’t measure anything in either inches or centimetres.
However, by always knitting your swatch to the same number of stitches and rows, depending on machine gauge, the scale enables you to accurately read off your tension of stitches and rows to 10cm, regardless of what yarn, stitch pattern, and stitch size you used.

I’ve used these scales for over 40 years and have found them to be incredibly accurate. Any errors have always been down to my bad maths when writing the pattern, and not the scale giving me an inaccurate answer.

It only takes a few minutes to knit a swatch (plus, resting and any laundering necessary), and can save hours of wasted time and yarn, both of which equal money, if you knit clothes or other items by guessing. Even the same yarn in different colours will give a different result, and stitch patterns like fairisle, and especially tuck, will vary hugely to the same yarn in stocking stitch.