Everyone knows that swatching for things like sweaters is important. Gauge is vital to ensuring a good fit, and making a swatch gives you a chance to make sure things are on track.

It’s easy, however, to assume that these things don’t matter with lace. It’s light, it’s airy, and when it’s going to be something like a scarf or shawl, what does it matter? A little bigger, a little smaller, what real difference does it make?

Well, it does. And I’ll give you two examples.

The first one, I mentioned the other day. My Peacock Feathers shawl is big. Huge. And so long when placed around my neck that the front corners almost touch the ground. If I had bothered to make (and block) a swatch in the first place, I would have known to use either smaller needles or something less slick, like bamboo, so that the shawl would have been that little bit smaller.

The second one regards pattern. I’ve ordered Chai yarn from Artfibers in San Francisco for my next shawl, and I thought I’d picked the lace pattern I wanted to knit it in. But tonight, since I’m waiting for my order anyway, I started a swatch.

  Yes, of course it’s miniscule–I only have a little of the yarn to work with–but this is two horizontal pattern repeats, and one vertical one, and you can see no rhyme or reason to the lace pattern in this swatch. The thick-and-thin nature of the yarn conspires to hide the airy, fragile nature of the lace stitch. An entire shawl made of this would be just as warm and airy as one in a different lace, the yarn would look just as beautiful, but just from this one swatch . . . I don’t think you’d ever see the actual pattern of the lace itself.

So, back to the drawing board. Or more precisely, the lace books, looking for a pattern that can stand up to the irregularities of this beautiful yarn. Something with a little more “meat” to it, I think, and with a more regular pattern, that the eye can “intuit” as it skims over the knitted fabric. Diamonds, perhaps.

In the meantime, though, I’ve discovered that I love the sheen of this yarn, and it slides pretty nicely across my Addi Turbos, but with a tiny bit of friction from the silk–but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. (See reason number one, above.) I also liked the size 5 needles I made this swatch on–stands up nicely to the overall weight of the yarn.

See? Swatching lace is useful after all! Who knew?

Tags: General, Knitting/Spinning // 8 Comments »