Swatching, scarcity, and shortcuts

That’s a lot of setup and cleanup for a picture. (Image by Alexandr Ivanov)

It's taken some time, but I finally understand that the act of knitting is only part of the process of knitting.

It's possible to spend dozens of hours knitting a sweater only to find that it is about five sizes too big (it's happened to me). If you want to avoid that, you swatch.

A swatch is an opportunity to see how a given stitch pattern is going to look in a given yarn, using a given needle size. You can sometimes get away with skipping this process if you are knitting a scarf or something where the size doesn't really matter, but that's short-sighted.

Even though I know swatching is a good idea, I have often resisted it or made the process as cursory as I could. Eventually, I had to explore why. This process brought to light some irrational assumptions I had made about productivity.

First, I didn't want to do all of steps of the swatching process, like washing and drying the swatch, because I was trying to conserve yarn. I thought I could make the swatch and then unravel it and use it for the project. I had to realize that if I were that close to the edge in my yarn supply, I might just need to pick a different project that was a better fit for the yarn I had.

A couple of swatches, one with a size 7 needle and the other with a size 6.

I also resisted swatching because of how time-consuming it is. But when I was also spending an hour picking out a pattern and then another hour picking out the perfect yarn, why was I trying to economize only when it came to creating a swatch?

The silly thing is that swatching is simply knitting. You sit there and knit it, just like you'd knit the actual project. Then, you might change needle sizes and knit another. Why was I avoiding knitting in order to knit? It made no sense.

In trying to answer these questions, I discovered that what bugged me about swatching was two things: a lack of certainty and a lack of visible forward progress.

I might create one swatch only to find out that I'd used a needle size that was not going to work for the project. Then, I'd have to create another swatch, and maybe even a third or fourth. It felt uncomfortable, imprecise, and slow.

In order to overcome my resistance to swatching, I had to reframe this. I had to recognize that swatching was the only way to get the information I was looking for. Finding out that a given needle was too big or too small to get the correct knitting gauge was a marker of success, not failure. By swatching, even if the swatch was "wrong," I was still making progress on a the project, just as had when I chose the pattern and bought the yarn.

Though it's easier to accept the hours it will take to create one or more swatches for a project, I still struggle with the uncertainty of the process. I have difficulty trusting my own measurements, making judgment calls, and using swatch-specific knitting techniques. That's to be expected since I'm still relatively new at swatching. With consistent practice, I will get better at swatching, just as I can get better at any other knitting-related skill. Or any skill at all, for that matter.

I can see that some of the same issues that come up in my swatching are repeated in other endeavors. For instance, in the name of creating visible progress, I tend to shortchange other aspects of the work (planning, research, cleanup, postmortem analysis) that should have been included in my time estimates or scope assessments. If I'm struggling with a project, I probably need to take a good look at these areas.

Being thorough is not always helpful. Sometimes, it doesn't count. There's no point in spending a bunch of time putting the finishing touches and final flourishes on a project that shouldn't even have been done in the first place. My strength is that I can spot and eliminate some of these areas where hard work isn't rewarded. However, I need to acknowledge when extra care and attention does contribute to the end result.

Knitting is a hobby for me; it doesn't have anything to do with my work. And yet, it has everything to do with my work. If I'm experiencing a sense of dissatisfaction with a project because it isn't turning out the way I had hoped, what is the equivalent of a "swatch" that might help me plan better? If I'm frustrated because of a lack of perceived results, where might I look to see progress that's being made that simply isn't evident yet?

If I want to see more satisfying outcomes in the things I do, I need to let go of the sense of scarcity that leads me to believe that I'm short on material resources or time. I need to see that these are irrational beliefs, not truths. I must evaluate the resources (yarn, money, time) that a project will take, and decide whether I can proceed based on facts, not feelings. Then, if a project is worth doing, it takes what it takes, and no shortcut will suffice.