Swatch It Out

Swatching isn’t something I generally spend a lot of time thinking about (or actually doing).

After starting (and then ripping out) so many sweaters that were too small for even a newborn to fit into, you would think I would’ve gotten my act together and began a campaign to swatch before every project.  Not the case, folks.  Old habits die hard.  Plus, I usually only knit socks and I’ve knit so many pairs, I know from experience what size needles to use for which technique, so swatching isn’t an absolute necessity.  But now that I’m adding sweaters into the mix, I decided that unless I become infant-sized, I need to do some swatching.

So here’s where this thought came from: I’m knitting a color-block cardigan with some of the yarn I got from my grandma but I didn’t have the perfect hunter/forest green in my stash that I was looking for for the body.  So I went out in search of the perfect yarn.  Today I went out to Michael’s and bought some Red Heart yarn that I thought would work well.  The yarn from my stash is a really old (some might say vintage) acrylic and I thought Red Heart would be a good modern day equivalent.  The yarn I got was perfect.  I was tempted to cast on immediately, but I restrained myself.  Although, the forest green Red Heart felt like it was the same weight as the vintage yarn I was using, you can never be sure.  And since a cardigan that ballooned out for the body because the gauge was significantly different, isn’t exactly the look I’m going for. So I cast on a swatch block.  I found it surprisingly rewarding.