A Tale of Two Swatches

I follow a number of knitting and crochet designers across the various social media platforms and Ravelry.    One of the designers that I follow, Zanete, has recently published her 50th pattern and is celebrating by hosting a knit along.  You can knit any of her patterns that you want, works in progress also count, and as long as you finish it within the knit along window you are eligible for the prize drawings.  I love her designs but haven’t knit any of them yet, so I went browsing her patterns and settled on the Sage Cardi, which is in my queue.

The fiber used in the original is Yak Single by Qing Fibre.  I am not a big fan of singles as they are not as strong as yarns made up of more than a single strand.  The fiber consists of 65% Merino, 20% Silk, 15% Yak, and is 525 yards per 120 grams.  Looking at the fiber content I can tell that it will probably have a fair bit of drape due to the silk and the yak content.  The yards per gram comes out to 525/120 = 4.375.  Using this information I went to my stash on Ravelry and started looking for a yarn that had some silk, and had a yards per gram of around 4.37.  When I am looking for a substitute yarn I will look at my stash in the list view so that I have the yardage and weight for the put up and can easily calculate the yards/gram.  The first possibility that I came across was Cascade Yarns Heritage Silk, which is 85% Merino, 15% Silk, and is put up in 437 yard per 100 grams.  Perfect, I thought, it has silk, so should drape well, and the yards per gram is 4.37.  I retrieved it from my stash, grabbed a pair of needles in the size recommended by the pattern (2.75 mm) and commenced swatching.  The resulting swatch is the aqua one in the top right of the photo above.

You will notice right away that I do not knit big swatches.  I cast on the number of stitches for four inches, plus four stitches because I always work a two stitch garter border.  It quickly became apparent to me that my gauge was coming out a fair bit smaller than what the pattern called for, which is 26 stitches and 36 rows.  When knitting my swatches I always begin and end with two rows of garter stitch, just to give a nice border.  When I knit this first swatch I did screw up and only worked 31 rows instead of 36, but it would still have come out too small.  The gauge I ended up with is 30 stitches and 42 rows.  The swatch is quite lovely, with nice drape, but I knew that if I tried to work the pattern with my gauge it would be a headache, so I went back to my stash list.

There were two other yarns that had caught my eye Dream in Color Smooshy, and Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere.  I pulled a skein of the Dream in Color Smooshy, caked it up and grabbed a 3.25 mm needle and swatched.  The Dream in Color Smooshy is 100% Merino, so I knew that it would not have the same amount of drape, but for this pattern I did not think that it would be crucial, it still has some drape, and being a fingering weight yarn the resulting fabric is not heavy.  It comes in 450 yards per 113 grams, or 3.98 yards/gram, which is obviously thicker than the yarn used in the original.  This yarn, however, knit to gauge exactly.  It is the swatch in the lower left corner of the above photo.

As I was looking at the two swatches I noticed something else, the stitches were even, with no rowing out on the back.  The side edges looked good as did the cast on and cast off edges.  No pulling in, no messy stitches.

Here is a photo of the two swatches with the blocking pins removed. And here is a photo of the backs.

The Smooshy swatch is better than the Heritage Silk swatch, which makes me think that I could knit the Heritage Silk on a needle one size smaller and get an even nicer fabric.  But this little experiment has helped substantiate a theory that I have had for a while, that there is an optimum needle size for any yarn that will give you a nice fabric that knits up beautifully.  I believe that the size of the needle is one that has twice the diameter of a strand of the yarn.  So, how do you figure this out?  Well, I have a great needle gauge that makes it easy.  On one side it has US sizes and on the other it has UK sizes.

If I take two strands of the Smooshy and lay them in the slot for the 3.25 mm (US 3) needle, you can see that they fit nicely, not crowded, not loose.

Now, I am not stretching the fibers when I do this.  I am holding them securely, but gently.  When I lay two strands of the Heritage Silk in the 2.75 mm hole, they fit as well.

But maybe with a little extra space, which makes me think that knitting them on a 2.25 mm needle might give me an even nicer fabric.  Why two strands?  Well, each stitch is created from a loop, which consists of two strands, and the stitch gauge is dictated by the diameter of the yarn, because you can only pack so many strands together.  It is also the natural state for a fabric knitted vertically.  The material will stretch until the stitches are as close as they can comfortably get.  If you look at the v’s of the stitches, you will see they are two strands wide.

So why does all of this matter?  Because when you knit you are creating intertwined loops of fabric, and it is this intertwining that gives the knitted fabric its characteristics.  I have frequently heard it said that if you want more drape knit at a looser gauge.  But what you are really doing when you do that is putting extra yarn into each stitch, and that extra yarn will go into the legs of the stitch if you are knitting vertically, and the width of the stitch if you are knitting horizontally.  Sure you can block it anyway you want, stretch the stitches out, stretch the rows out, but when you wear it, those stitches are going to back to their equilibrium position and the fabric will grow vertically.  This is one of the reasons why it is easier to get stitch gauge.  This is also why if you get stitch gauge but do not get row gauge you still have not gotten gauge.  Something else that I have noticed is that there is a fairly consistent stitch to row ratio for a nicely knitted fabric.  For the Smooshy swatch 26/36 = 0.72 and for the Heritage Silk swatch 30/42 = 0.71, which is also why I think that a lot of patterns recommend picking up 2 stitches for every 3 rows when you are working button bands, or picking up stitches around armholes.

So what does all of this mean from a yarn selection/substitution perspective?  First, check the gauge.  If I see a gauge that has a stitch to row ratio that does not fall into the 0.7 range, I get concerned, unless it is garter stitch, which has its own set of rules.  Then I check the yarn weight and composition and determine if the gauge makes sense with the yarn, by comparing the pattern gauge with what is on the ball band (if it is provided) or by looking at the stitch gauge range for that yarn weight.  Then I find a yarn that will give me the gauge and a nice fabric.  If I can’t do that, I find a yarn that gives me a nice fabric and do the math to make the pattern with my gauge.

One more thing.  I have often read that you need a big swatch because swatches lie.  I think swatches only lie if you are not knitting at the optimum gauge for the yarn in question.  I don’t think my swatches are going to lie, not even a little bit.  One thing to note is that I did not stretch my swatches out at all when I pinned them, I just uncurled them and pinned them.  There was no rebound when I pulled the blocking pins out.  If you have to stretch your swatch to get gauge, you have not gotten gauge.  Of course all of this discussion is really only applicable to stockinette stitch, but if you get a nice knitted fabric in stockinette you are well on your way to getting a nice fabric in other stitches.  The above does not generally apply to lace, of course.