Swatching and Swatching Some More

When the Tour de Fleece rolls around, I expect I'll do less knitting in favor of more spinning, but I really didn't do much knitting this weekend in spite of wanting to. True, I did keep busy with the usual chores and errands plus an unexpected trip to to the Apple Store (I had to get my phone replaced because my battery was swelling), but I was hoping to try to finish up the body of my Soldotna. In reality, I haven't touched it in days.

My lunchtime knitting is now a pair of shortie socks for Rainbow, using yarn leftover from her sweater and a stitch pattern I'm playing with for a new pattern. I'm still not entirely convinced if I like it or not.

She says she likes it, and I do like what I've done with the rest of the sock (though it still needs some tweaks). I'll need to give it another try in yarn where the big yarnovers can be seen a little better, perhaps even some self-striping. I also think it'll look better when it's stretched on a foot. Still pondering.

Most of the knitting that happened over the weekend was swatching. You may remember when I came back from MDSW that I announced that I would be designing another sweater this year -- it was one of my design goals for 2019. I'm hoping to be able to release it to coincide with Rhinebeck weekend, so I really need to get moving. I first swatched the colorwork motif (which you can get a little peek of in the photo below) to see how it translated from paper to yarn, but to write and grade the pattern, I needed a good-sized stockinette swatch.

I had a number of leftover partial balls of the Ross Farm Shetland Sport in my stash, so I used up some of those rather than break into the skeins I'll need for the sweater (though I did compare the yarn I used for this swatch to the sweater yarn to make sure it was comparable). I know some of you will tell me that I can always reuse the yarn from my swatch in my sweater, but I had a good reason for using separate yarn:

I steeked this swatch! I wanted to get a really accurate representation of my gauge in the round, and I didn't feel that the usual way of faux swatching in the round was going to do that. So I cast on something like 50 stitches and knit a tube. Then I secured two columns with slip-stitch crochet using a contrasting color and cut between the columns. Ta-da -- instant flat swatch to measure knitting in the round! I've got a nice sturdy fabric that still has decent drape, and it's measuring up at 22 stitches and 32 rounds over 4 inches/10 cm. Now I'm ready to sit down with measurements and a calculator to figure out my sizing and adjust the colorwork chart. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Keep your fingers crossed for me!