simple stitches.

I was pretty excited this past week when my new book, Barbara G. Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns arrived on my doorstep. It's been in my Amazon cart for about a year now, I finally decided to check it out! The evening it arrived, I tucked myself into bed and started paging through each of the sections, making notes of the stitch patterns I wanted to try.

On Saturday morning, I grabbed a cup of coffee and some red cotton yarn from my stash, then eased into the day with a simple knit/purl stitch, the Roman Rib stitch:   

I love having something simple on the needles, especially when I'm also working on something that requires a little more concentration. It's nice to have something that you can pick up, knit a few stitches or rows, then put it back down without having to remember where you are in the pattern. 

On Sunday, I decided to try something a little different, the Double Mock Ribbing stitch, this time in navy cotton. While the Roman Rib resulted in a springy fabric, the structure of this stitch pattern resulted in a very flat textile with very little give. I probably wouldn't use this stitch in a garment—it's much better suited for household items such as pillow covers, table runners, or placemats. 

Here's the reverse side:

I cast on 32 stitches for each square, knitting a few rows of garter stitch at the beginning and end of the swatch, as well as the first and last three stitches of each row. This way, these simple cotton swatches can be repurposed as dishcloths for the kitchen! 

Hope you're having a lovely week...

The case for swatching.

Swatching. Some knitters love to take the time at the beginning of a project to test and make sure that the combination of yarn, needles and knitting tension all add up to the perfect gauge. After all, good gauge means a well-fitting garment. Other knitters, like myself, tend to dive head-first into new projects, eager to get that new skein of wool onto the needles—gauge be damned. As long as we're using the right size needles and correct yarn weight, we should be cool, right? Not so much. 

I'm currently knitting the adult size of Alicia Plummer's beautiful Barnwood Hat, in The Fibre Co.'s luminous Acadia yarn. First, let me just say how much I love this pattern and the yarn—the lace motif is easy-peasy to remember (especially while you're catching up on OITNB) and the yarn has such a soft, light hand thanks to the addition of alpaca and silk. 

The pattern says the hat should fit a head circumference of 22" once blocked. I'm afraid that while I have the yarn weight and the needle sizes correct, my tension may be a little loose for this project. I'm almost to the crown and the body circumference seems a little bit wider than it should—it's already measuring 9" across. Knowing how much lace grows once it's blocked, I'm pretty sure this is going to be one of those cool, slouchy hats vs. a knitted cap. 

I think next time I'll swatch. What about you, knitters--how many of you really swatch?