Knitting Suzanne – Swatching

To my non-knitting readers, I apologize. You know how excited I get with new things and interesting. I’m trying to be sure to put the appropriate title so you know right of the bat that it’s a knitting topic and you can just mosey on by without wasting your time.

Also, I’m going to put Knitting Suzanne in the title of everything related to this adventure. If you don’t care about this project, you can just skip over it and not miss otherwise amazing knitting info. Because, you know . . all my blog posts are amazing . . right? : )

Yesterday I mentioned that Knitting Suzanne has a blog and you tube channel. I started out by watching her swatching video. I have yet to meet a knitter who loves to swatch. In fact, I detest swatching and will sometimes decide to do a shawl or socks instead of swatching for a sweater I’m wanting to start. Swatching is immensely important for things that need to fit. Yes, socks need to fit but I’ve done so many of those that I know by the feel of the yarn what gauge I’m going to get with plain vanilla socks. Also, with socks all that really matters is that it fit around your leg comfortably. No matter the gauge, you just knit til the leg is as long as you want it to be, then knit the heel, then knit the foot as long as you want it to be.

But for sweaters or anything that needs to fit, a swatch must be done. If the pattern calls for 5 stitches per inch and you’re knitting a sweater front that’s going to be 20″ and your knitting is off by even one inch either way, it makes a huge difference. At 5 stitches per inch, the pattern will tell you to knit 100 stitches but if you’re gauge is 4 stitches per inch, you’re piece is going to be 25″ and at 6 stitches per inch, then you’re piece is going to be about 17″ instead of 20″.

The swatch needs to be soaked and blocked in order to see how it will stretch/shrink/relax after it is laundered.  The stitches become nice and uniform after soaking and blocking, so the soaking and blocking needs to be done before counting stitches.

But, Suzanne’s swatching video totally changed how I will do my swatches in the future. If you’re a knitter and if you swatch, I’m betting there’s one important thing we have ALL been told and that we have ALL been doing. Suzanne says not to do it, and gives a way to fix it if we really want to do it. This one video totally changes how I will swatch! I’m not giving away her secrets but go watch her video. I think you will be amazed!

In all of my swatch photos I could find, the swatches were all pinned down so I couldn’t show what “mistake” Suzanne is talking about but it’s obvious in every swatch I’ve done and I think it explains why my sweaters don’t fit perfectly when the swatch was perfect.

I’ve already learned enough that if I don’t learn anything else, and I know I have LOTS more to learn, I would still feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth.