Knitting Patterns: Swatches

Video Transcript

"So, I want to give you a final plug for making a gauge swatch and that's what we did. This is a gauge swatch. You know, we do knitting. We knit because it's fun, because we love to make things and we love to work with the yarn and we love to knit beautiful patterns but the gauge swatch is really important and it's all in your attitude. You know, it's still knitting and it's still trying out your yarn, how it feels. You can practice your stitch if it's something new and you know contrary to popular belief there are no swatch beliefs but if you don't make a gauge swatch, it will catch up to you if your knitting doesn't come out right. Now, sometimes people save their swatches because it's good information. You can write down what needle you use for what yarn and what gauge you got. It's makes really good reference item or you can save them to be some kind of crazy afghan when you have like little time and want to play with such a thing. I actually kept a number of swatches not all of them but here are a number of swatches I kept over time to show you different kinds of yarns and you can see the different ways things knit up and let's see if I have any stitches in here. This is a crochet swatch and all these swatches you know they took a little time but it was important to try out the new stitches and then one day I can take them and I can sew them all together into some kind of crazy quilt. So, if that helps you want to a gauge swatch you know so be it but remember it's really important to swatch so that your knitting comes out the way you want it to."