I feel like I can get away in crochet with not making a gauge swatch. I think I must crochet in a pretty middle-of-the-road way, because the times when I've tried it seemed to work pretty well. For shawls it doesn't matter, of course!

I just started knitting a sweater (I did do a sort of half-hearted gauge swatch and gave up when it looked reasonably gauge-like) so I guess we'll see! In... some number of months, omg knitting is so slow.

Oh no, sorry about the mice!