Up until a year ago, these were the parts of knitting I just hated. Well, not so much hated as just didn't do. But when I started doing stranded colorwork I had to get over this, and these days swatching is one of my favorite parts of knitting. A swatch is tiny and fast, and so full of potential ...you can swatch before you know whether you're swatching for a cowl or a sweater or a sweater with a crazy huge cowl neck or, I dunno, a refrigerator cozy. A swatch is a little tiny nugget of pure knitting fantasy.
What do you think this will grow up to be? I don't know yet, but I do know this: The book this came from, Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs, is very dangerous. It's basically the Kama Sutra of knitting books: It will make you suddenly want to try, right now, things that never would've occurred to you otherwise.
These days (ie, the days near Christmas), I try to be a little more reliable than I usually am about sticking with one pattern until it's finished. (Okay, maybe two or three. But no more, seriously.) Swatching is a great way to relieve just a little of that monotony without getting myself totally off-track.
Blocking is satisfying for the exact opposite reasons. It has a finality to it. As someone who's terrible at finishing projects, I feel a massive sense of achievement every time I pin down a completed project to dry. (Hah! Take that, stupid procrastinating brain.) Not to mention ... it just looks nicer. Here's a scarf I finished a couple weeks ago; I'm not showing you the whole thing because shhh, it's a christmas present! I knit it from the bottoms up, blocked both ends, then knit a little more in the middle, grafted the two pieces together and blocked the whole thing again. I don't have before and after pictures, but I have in-between and after pictures:
Yes, that's right: I love blocking so much that I blocked this scarf twice. I wanted the two ends to be exactly the same length as each other, and the whole thing to be as close to 60'' as I could make it, so I blocked when I was most of the way done to get a better feeling for the final dimensions. Anyhow, isn't it amazing how blocking smooths things out so nicely?
What's your favorite weekend knitting?
That cable looks spectacular!
ReplyDeleteI think my designated weekend project is whatever requires more attention/effort than what I can manage to cart around with me during the week, which is usually some sort of sock. I like to start new things on the weekends, too.
Those cables would look great on a fridge cozy.
ReplyDeleteOr anything else.
I never thought of swatching as being so open, like a string sketchbook. and omg, I love that you called Barbara Walker's chart book the Kama Sutra of knitting books.
ReplyDelete