I have an odd fondness for swatching. It’s so much fun, when I am nearing the end of one project, to pull out the yarn for my next project and get just a little taste of what knitting with it will be like. It’s always a great time to try new stitches, try using my needles and tools in different ways, and continue my constant experimentation with directional decreases.
Most of my knitting friends seem to dislike knitting swatches. I can’t count how many times someone has asked either myself or a group of knitters at large for advice on a garment, but when asked, “How did your swatch come out,” she confessed to not knitting one. Although I can understand, in an academic sense, how they are excited and impatient to cast on the actual project, I don’t really “get” it.
(It’s like stashing – something else that I neither enjoy nor really comprehend. Having extra yarn at home feels to me like having homework left undone: it hangs over my head and makes me feel guilty and lazy. Yet many of my fellow knitters cheerfully discuss and constantly add to their stashes, using phrases like, “She who dies with the most yarn, wins!” One of them is even gleefully using a random number generator to select new projects from her stash. Whereas I attempt – and sometimes fail – to have yarn on hand for my next round of projects. Maybe I’m in the wrong hobby.)
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I knit up a swatch for my next Fair Isle project, a pullover for my husband. We picked out the colors while on a trip to Wisconsin, where they actually stock yarns suitable for Fair Isle, and had the yarn shipped to our house.
As is usual with Fair Isle, the colors didn’t quite do what I expected, so I put the yarn back into its box and thought about it for a while. Yesterday I pulled it all back out and played around some more.
I always think that it is neat to see how mixing up the colors can totally change what I see in a pattern. These are two of the better swatches. I suspect that I’ll be knitting the sweater with the colors from the bottom swatch. I like how the top swatch showcases the motif, but I can’t see putting that much yellow on Jim!
Haha. I’m blocking a swatch right now. Knitting it was my “treat” for cleaning all the floors in the house.
I don’t think you’re a victim of the “rampant consumerism” that leads to stashing. (That’s probably harsh, but I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about being frugal lately.)
I know now that I’m trying really hard to save money, I like being able to “shop in my stash.”
As for swatching, I do it for big projects usually. But most of the time I do a vere small swatch, rip it out and keep going. The main difference is that I’ll rip something out as much as it takes to get it right.