Swatches, Let me Count the Ways I Hate You

I absolutely hate swatching. For those of you who don’t know what a swatch is, let me explain. A swatch is a small piece of test knit fabric used to obtain gauge in knitting. Gauge is a measurement of knitting stitches to find out what size to make in a particular pattern. Swatches are usually 4”x4” square that after you have knit them are completely useless and just sit around collecting dust. The reason to swatch is because everyone’s knitting tension is unique and what the designer got in gauge may be vastly different than what you get. For example I am normally a tight knitter meaning I have to go up several knitting needle sizes to obtain gauge. The reason why you want to swatch is because if your gauge is off the sweater you are knitting can turn out either too small or too big.

I know it is very important thing to do in knitting, but I find it boring and time consuming. Don’t get me wrong, swatching has saved my butt from frogging on several occasions and it is a great way to see what the yarn will look like knitted up, but I can’t stand it. Mostly because when I find a new project, I want to cast on immediately and by the time I have finished my swatch and it is completely dry I don’t want to knit the project anymore and have moved onto something else. Not to mention it uses up a decent amount of yarn that I also don’t have the yardage to spare.

For example, Andrea Mowry just released a new pattern Junction, that looks amazing. I can’t wait to start knitting it, but I’m having a hard time picking out the yarns I want to use for the pattern. I have two beautiful fade options, but finding the main color tricky. What that means is I will now have to swatch both fades using each of my main color options. That is a total of 4 exceedingly long swatches that I am not looking forward to. Ugh the bane of my existence.