Swatches they say is the key to great fitting hand knit garments. “They say” lol, I can’t help but laugh because I KNOW that making a gauge swatch is critical for certain projects but I just never do them lol. Never might be a stretch, I do like to play with a new ball or hank of yarn and you’d think knitting a swatch would just come naturally, however…Jumping head first into a project, casting on that 127 stitches, just to find out the yarn is too thick or thin is an adrenaline rush that you simply wouldn’t understand unless you were in my head (you don’t wanna be in there, you might get lost)
As a chronic project starter and scatter brained knitter there’s literally no telling where my knitting adventures go. I may be wrist deep in a sweater, hat and shorts all on the same day. Then work on a blanket tomorrow just because I saw a pattern that I wanted to try. Swatching just never was my cup of tea, even with some epic fails, I still just love to start and see what happens. However, there are some yarns that are just too perfect to mess up and a swatch is my ease into appreciating what it can do.
There are many a thing to be torn up over but I feel that yarn is so expressive and joyful that I just can’t take it “social media” level of sensitivity. It’s a ball of yarn and ultimately frogging it is okay, noones time was wasted except my own.
Do you swatch? If you do, do you save your swatches or rip them out as precious real estate in your project? If you don’t swatch, what’s your reasoning behind it?
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