There was a time when I looked on swatching as a necessary evil at best, but not anymore. I've grown to love the process of swatching and see it as the best way to get to know how the yarn I've chosen will behave in the garment I've chosen.
Most recently, having a gauge swatch that matched the sweater pattern's recommended gauge made me more aware of how the garment should be shaping up at each point along the way. I had reached a transition point in the Cria cardigan and was ready to continue knitting when I looked at the knitting in my hands and, knowing I was getting gauge, I realized that something wasn't right. The yoke section looked really a lot more shallow than it should.
I looked back at the pattern and, sure enough, where the directions had stated to repeat the last 4 rows five more times, I had repeated only the last 2 rows. Ripping back at that point wasn't fun, but it was a lot more fun than finishing a sweater only to find that it didn't fit.
The book that the Cria pattern is found in is Little Red in the City by Ysolda Teague. Ysolda doesn't just recommend that you knit a gauge swatch, she devotes 12 pages of the book to an in-depth discussion of swatching.
The particular swatch that I knit for the Cria is a lot wider than the swatches I usually knit up. I wanted to be absolutely sure that I would get the width I needed since length is rarely a problem for me being that I am only 5'2" and most sweater patterns as written need to be modified for my shorter torso and shorter arms. So the swatch all folded up looks like a comfy little pillow. The yarn is Posh Fingering from The Uncommon Thread in the colorway she calls 'Charred'.
I have a little stack of swatches on my work table and each of them was knit for a sweater that actually fits me properly. The swatches are not just nice to look at, they can be used as coasters in a pinch.
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