by Twisted Cord.
If you’re dead set against swatching at all or beyond 4 inches by 4 inches, Catherine Lowe understands. In The Ravell’d Sleeve, she calls swatching (and blocking) “the outcasts of the hand-knitter,” and she concedes that these preparatory steps interfere with a knitter’s “immediate gratification.” So those of us content to knit items where gauge matters little such as scarves or cowls can carry on. But those who want to up their game—to produce reliable and elegant fabric, to knit garments with flawless fit, refined details and construction, items that wear and hold their form over time—might want to revisit the notion of swatching.
For me, a maker who has knit the tiniest piece, pulled out a tape measure, measured from edge to edge, fudged the math, and then unravelled the swatch, Lowe’s book was frighteningly rigorous. (Did I mention using my sewing machine to take in an oversized sweater or shorten sleeves?) She champions gauge swatches that yield the most reliable information about the fabric of which a garment will be made.
Lowe is not an opinionated knitter or an advocate. She is a thorough and factual one who understands that technique is inextricably linked to technicalities. She explains why a swatch must be knit using the very make and size of needles (not just the same size), and the very yarn and dye-lot that the knitter will use in the actual garment. And her case for a larger, properly blocked swatch with those prerequisites—at least 12” x 12” in size—is compelling:
- Edge-to-edge measurements yield an inaccurate gauge. Side-edge stitches are not whole stitches but rather incomplete ones not held by neighbouring stitches. And cast-on rows can be 1.5 times higher than a row of regular knitting, while cast-off rows can be on one-quarter of that height. When these discrepancies go into the computation of gauge they produce inaccurate results.
- A small swatch cannot replicate how a knitter really knits and hence how a knitter will actually knit the garment. Putting it another way, a small swatch will not reflect the variability in a knitter’s technique owing to stitch pattern, fibre type, needle size, let alone their emotional state. Nor does a small swatch account for the gestures and adjustments that a knitter unconsciously makes each row—pausing and moving stitches along the barrel of the needle, for instance, or re-tensioning the yarn in the hand.
- Blocking (by whatever means) alters both the dimensions and hand of the fabric. Handknitting tends to “relax” when blocked or finished (by washing or dry cleaning), and the degree to which this happens cannot be accurately anticipated. “A gauge swatch that has not been finished in exactly the same way the knitter, or the owner, intends to treat the completed garment,” writes Lowe, “can only hint at those stitches and row counts that will ultimately determine the dimensions of the garment.”
The Ravell’d Sleeve contains chapters of over twenty pages on each of swatching and blocking, and I don’t pretend to have absorbed all of its wisdom. But I stand by it as a go-to reference book for any knitter willing to move beyond received wisdom about the much maligned swatch
