Why I Love to Swatch
Plus, a terrific book for a lazy summer weekend
When I was in my early 20’s, and a relatively new knitter, I picked up Barbara G. Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns at the small bookstore near my office in San Francisco. Then I spent an entire summer choosing stitch patterns at random and making swatches with whatever leftover yarn was close at hand.
That Summer of Swatching™ made me the knitter I am today. More than 40 years later, I’m still a knitter who enjoys knitting a swatch. Let me tell you why.
The Stakes are Low
When you knit a swatch with no particular project in mind, the stakes are low. You are just playing with yarn and needles. There is no pressure to match a specified gauge. Mistakes don’t matter. You are not investing a lot of time and money. You are simply doing something you enjoy—knitting!
It’s an Opportunity to Learn
That Summer of Swatching taught me how knitting works. I came to understand the operation and appearance of different increases and decreases. I learned how cables pull in and how lace expands. I learned about the relationship between knits and purls and how their juxtaposition impacts the behavior and appearance of the knitted fabric. I learned to recognize errors in the instructions and figure out the corrections. I also learned to recognize my mistakes and figure out how to fix them (if I wanted to) without ripping out the whole piece.
It's a Conversation With the Yarn
One of the reasons I enjoy publishing yarn reviews is the chance to swatch with a new yarn. Yarn is endlessly varied. The fiber content (including the breed of the sheep who grew the wool), the fiber processing, the spinning, and the dying all affect the performance of the yarn. No matter how tempting yarn looks in the skein, you can never know whether it’s a good choice for you and your project until you get it on your needles.
I always start with that most basic of fabrics: stockinette stitch. It gives me a baseline for comparison. While I’m knitting that first swatch, I’m paying attention to how the yarn feels in my hands: does it flow smoothly, or feel sticky or scratchy against my fingers? Is it bouncy or inelastic? Do the plies want to split as I’m knitting? In the back of my mind, I’m comparing it to similar yarns of my acquaintance.
I also pay attention to passing thoughts like, “This yarn would be beautiful in a lace pattern,” or “I’ll bet this would make great cables.” Those passing thoughts are the yarn telling me what it wants to be. Just like us, I think yarn wants to be put to use doing what it does well, not forced into a role for which it’s not temperamentally suited. When the yarn speaks, I pay attention! Many of my favorite designs have been conceived while knitting a swatch.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working – attributed to Pablo Picasso
It Develops Your Taste
When I lived in Sonoma County, California, I spent many an afternoon visiting the tasting rooms of some world-class wineries. Tasting a lot of wine made from a wide variety of grapes by many different wine makers taught me to know and trust what I like.
When you’re tasting wine, you learn to first ask, “Do I like it?” Then you ask, “Why?” The price doesn’t matter. The opinion of the person serving the wine doesn’t matter. The only opinion that counts is yours.
When knitting swatches, you can use the same framework to evaluate your knitting. Do you like it? What about it do you like or not like? This will develop your taste in both yarn and stitch patterns. I have no problem with abandoning a swatch after just a couple of rows if I don’t enjoy either the yarn, the mechanics of the pattern stitch, or the combination of yarn and stitch together. But I’ve developed my taste enough that I’m pretty good at predicting which yarns and stitch patterns will make a pleasing combination.
When in Doubt, Make a Swatch
Next time you’re between projects, knit a swatch. If you’re heading off on a trip and want some travel knitting, pack some leftover yarn, a circular needle, and some stitch patterns you want to try. Instead of thinking of a swatch as a means to an end (determining gauge for your next project), swatch the way an artist sketches: to keep your skills sharp, to gain mastery over your materials, to explore a texture, and for the pure sensual pleasure of doing it.
Continue the conversation: What is your relationship with swatching? Are you a card-carrying member of the “I Never Swatch Club”? Do you only swatch to test yarn and needle size for a project? Are you an exploratory swatcher? Tell me about it in the comments.
Here in the US, tomorrow is Independence Day, and many people will have a 3-day weekend. If you’re in need of a good book you can finish while someone else minds the grill, I heartily recommend Ruth Run by Elizabeth Kaufman.
Ruth is a 26-year-old expert in microchip design who is coming to the end of a 5-year project. She designed a firewall chip with a secret backdoor which enables her to siphon millions of dollars out of the banking system.
When a tripwire alarm goes off, Ruth knows she has been discovered, and she goes on the run. The novel follows her as she is chased across California and Nevada and into Idaho by a posse of government agents. Some of those agents have been obsessed with Ruth for years and will do whatever it takes to manipulate her for their own purposes.
Will Ruth elude her pursuers? Is there anyone she can trust? These questions make for a propulsive plot that kept me tied to my phone listening to the audiobook. This is the rare thriller with an engaging (though, OK, morally suspect) female protagonist and very little violence. It’s a slim 300 pages in print, or a bit over 7 hours in audio.
Things that caught my eye…
This week’s jam (you’ll be grooving in your chair while you listen):
“Taste is not a fixed attribute. It’s trained. It comes from time spent in the medium, from decisions made and revised, from paying attention to what resonates and what doesn’t.” Yes to this, from
’ Substack Good Graf!I’m remembering Bill Moyers, who died last week at the age of 91. His television programs on PBS and CBS set a standard for thoughtful, responsible journalism that has rarely been matched. Moyers approached his interview subjects with kindness, compassion, and curiosity. He championed moral values, ethical leadership, and social responsibility without ever becoming preachy.
Mansfield Park is my favorite among Jane Austen’s novels. I enjoyed this essay by another favorite novelist, Lauren Groff, exploring the moral themes undergirding Mansfield.
I love Jason Farago’s guides in the New York Times to close examination of a work of art. This week, the subject is a landscape by Cézanne—a painter who is not usually to my taste. Being led through the painting by an expert who loves Cézanne is a treat.
I know, I haven’t updated you on the two sweaters in progress. But this post is already long. I’ll show you how both are coming along next week. In the meantime, paid subscribers can see the progress of my Waffle Sweater, along with all the details of how I’ve modified the pattern to suit my gauge, over here.
As always, thank you for spending some of your precious time with me this week. Happy Canada Day earlier this week. Happy Independence Day to American readers! Please celebrate safely.
This is a refreshing look at swatching. It reminds me of artists working in series, doing several riffs of a theme. In the end one has several to choose from for the best.
It is so fun to read from an aficionado in a world of civilians.
I think of swatching as a yarn date!