Back more than a decade ago, I wrote a long-ish post on swatching, and why do I find it important to swatch. I still stand by every word, I've written down there.
Swatching IS important. Do I always swatch? By now, not, but I have knitted so much, that there are yarns, I know pretty well. Sock/sport/fingering weight yarn is like that. You know, I knit a lot of things with sock-yarn, I have knitted stockinett, lace, striped, stranded, all kinds of patterns with it, so I seldom swatch with that, anymore.
But otherwise, I do swatch... and now, as I was finishing up some sweaters, and I was planning what to knit next, I did swatch.
Like, I was curious about the new DROPS yarn, Fiesta, and wondered, how it knits up, and how its solid/semisolid and kind of "sprayed" colors work together.
I am actually loving it, it is thicker than the sockyarn I usually use for stranded, but I like how it knits up and how it feels. I have no concrete plans for this, but whenever the muse finds me, I will know whet can I expect.
As for concrete plans, I do want to make some white and blue stranded knits, and I have tried DROPS Sky. Interestingly enough, as much as I love DROPS yarns, I have never knitted with any of their blown yarns (though I do have a whole sweater-worth of Air).
Unblocked.
And blocked (yes, I know, I promised a post on blocking, I am working on it).
It IS soft, maybe even too soft for my taste (I have already said it a few times that I prefer slightly more "rustic" and denser yarns), and it blurs the line of the fair isle. Besides the "white" color is not optic-white, but natural white (yellowish), so this plan will not be realized from this yarn, and I will have to figure out, what to make from the almost two balls (one white and one blue), to get them out of my stash. Once again, it IS a lovely yarn, but not for me at the moment.
Then I have a lacey sweater in my mind, and I fell into the trap of tends, and wanted to try adding some mohair to my knitting, so I bought some white alpaca and Kid Silk.
Aside from the fact that though both DROPS Alpaca and Flora has a white shade (aside from the regular "natural" -i.e: yellowish- white) DROPS's Kid Silk does not have one, only the natural white, and their "chalk" color is pinkish/grayish, so I used the Lana Gatto Kid Silk (which IS white-white--- oh, I think a post about the hunt for the whitest yarn is brewing) and it is pretty... but... BUT. The gauge is way off from what I need, and the thing is, that I was always on the fence about this trend of using wool and mohair yarn together.
I did make another sawtch, this time only from the DROPS Alpaca:
I actually prefer the stitch-definition without the mohair, and it is much closer to the gauge I need.
Last, but not least... The seaglass collection was on my mind for a while, and it was a strong contender for the New Year's swater, and the only reason I haven't choose it, was that I did not want to make, yet another red and gray sweater, and also, that I thought I have a lot more gray, and black/white/gray shaded sock-yarns that I thought.
However, the pattern itself did not left my mind, and I thought, I might just knit it outta my head.
This is one of those cases, when I do knit a swatch from sock-yarns..
Yes, there is a glaring mistake in the middle, but otherwise I love it, and I keep thinking, what else colors should I make it, if not those reds and grays.
Maybe use sockyarns from purple shades, and greens for contrast? Or blue patterned sockyarns with orange for contrast? or?
Swatching can be fun, isn't it?
What about you? Do sou knit swatches? If yes, why not? And if yes, how? Just for some particular pattern or just because, and out of curiousity?
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