I’m swatching. I’m not supposed to be starting any new projects in January but I want a reserve project for group tomorrow in case I find that the one that I am [i]supposed[/i] to be working on is too difficult to do in company. (Charts can go haywire when the chat gets going)
I sometimes have trouble in persuading some knitters that it is worth taking the time to swatch. Very often I ignore my own advice but there is no doubt about it, if you want perfect results then you do need to undergo this simple process.
In this case I don’t need to swatch for size but I do want to test that my needle size produces an attractive fabric. So far, things are looking good.
Decode for non-knitters: I am knitting a test square to check my tension. This is a simple small square of knitting which is then washed and dried (in case of shrinkage) before being measured to check the number of stitches per inch (or metric equivalent) in each direction. They can be tricky beasts if you are producing a garment to fit – it can be hard to match both the stitch count and the row count and small differences in a test square soon multiply across a whole sweater! Knowing what you are doing at this stage can save tears later. So it is always worth pausing and practising this discipline.
What’s it going to be?
Sadly, this will be the last time that I share my Blips via Twitter or Facebook. I’m simply not happy with the Polaroid branding being shoved in front of my friends’ faces. I have also removed the widget that was displaying my Blips from my blog. So,if you are used to navigating here from either of those places, you will need to come here directly in future if you do wish to see my blips.