When Jen mentioned she was thinking of doing some kits for Gudrun Johnston’s Yokey Dokey sweater (Ravelry link will take you to a classic look page), I jumped at the chance to do some swatching! I, ahem, don’t always swatch for colourwork projects — but I always should! It’s important to not only check that those colours that you think are going to look ah-mazing together actually work in the pattern, but also, of course, to check your tension against that of the pattern. For the purposes of measuring tension, any swatch should be knitted using a method as similar as possible to what you’ll be using for the actual project. That means if you’re going to be knitting a project in the round — whether it involves colourwork or not — you should try to knit your swatch in the round. Ideally you should use the same needles you plan to use for the project (because needle material can affect tension). While some knitters elect to take their chances and knit a flat tension square for some in-the-round projects, knitting flat colourwork can be tricky and is also very unlikely to give you an accurate idea of your tension in the round.

So what’s a knitter to do? Elizabeth Zimmerman advised hats as the perfect way to check tension for jumper projects, but, as much as I love EZ’s advice, this is a pretty yarn hungry and time intensive solution, especially if you anticipate making multiple swatches. Here are two different ways I knit fast(ish) in the round swatches.

The faux circular swatch

Using either a circular needle or long DPN, cast on the number of stitches you’d like to work your swatch over, plus a few extra. Work your first right side row. When you come to the end of it, instead of turning your knitting and working the wrong side, slide your work back to the right needle tip and carry your working yarn across the back of the swatch to allow you to knit another right side row — you’ll have a big yarn loop across the wrong side. Make sure to leave plenty of slack in that yarn running across the back so you don’t distort your swatch. Repeat until you’ve worked as many rows as you desire. Easy! (If you’d like to see a video tutorial of this method, you can find a short one here.)

The pros of this method are it’s fast and doesn’t involve working in the round over a small circumference, which can distort your gauge. I do, however, find it a tad awkward. You also end up with stitch distortion at either end of your swatch — which is why you need to make sure you have a few extra stitches on either end that you won’t include when you measure your tension. If you pull your working yarn too tightly across the back of your swatch or your swatch grows significantly when blocked, you also might need to snip all those yarn loops on the WS to be able to accurately measure your tension square. (If you don’t — hoorah! you can unravel your swatch if you need the yarn back — just don’t bank on it!)

Shown above is the finished swatch with fringe! Even though I carried my yarn pretty loosely across the back, my swatch wouldn’t lie flat nicely without snipping them. These were the colours used in our Brown Yokey Dokey kit.

Steeking a Swatch

I used the steeked method for the majority of my Yokey Dokey swatches — I like it when I’m using a yarn, like Jamieson & Smith 2ply Jumper Weight, that is sticky and stands up well to a snip. You simply cast on the number of stitches you’d like your swatch to be, plus a few extra stitches for your steek (mine was four stitches wide), join in the round using your favourite method for working small circumferences and knit to desired length. Cut your swatch open and block and you’re ready to measure. With this approach, I like the ease of just knitting in the round and the frisson of excitement that comes with cutting my knitting! The downsides are there’s no chance of reusing the yarn should you need it, and it can be difficult to evenly tension your yarn when stranding over a small circumferences. Some knitters find they end up knitting at a different gauge over small circumferences (but this is valuable information to have if, like in the Yokey Dokey Sweater, you’ll be knitting colourwork on the sleeves). Jen has a great post (with diagrams!) about knitting inside out to mitigate this problem — I should have definitely followed its advice for my swatches as they have some uneven stranding!

Neither of these methods produce perfect tension squares as they only approximate knitting in the round over a larger circumference — but then, no tension square is perfect! All sorts of factors — number of stitches on needles, length of time we’ve been working on the project, our mood — can conspire to mean the tension of our garment doesn’t always match the tension we achieved swatching. But if you measure and note your pre-blocking tension, you can at least periodically check your project tension against it as you go and of course correct if necessary!

Shown above are my first and fourth swatches … knitted with the same yarn and same needles over the same number of stitches! Lots of things can affect our tension — in this case, perhaps I got more relaxed as I became more familiar with the pattern! The top swatch is MC: 78 mix with CC1: 96; CC2: 1a; CC3: 101 and CC4: 72 mix, all of which are currently in the online shop. And the swatch below is the Blue colourway, which is unfortunately still out of stock.

And in case that has you thinking, “Why bother swatching at all?”, here are two final reasons to swatch for a big stranded colourwork project like the Yokey Dokey sweater…

Firstly, most knitters will not achieve the same tension when knitting stranded colourwork and stocking stitch on the same size needle. Anticipating this, Gudrun’s pattern advises to drop down one needle size or to the size necessary to achieve tension when you begin working the plain body. But every knitter is different, so it’s important to swatch both the stranded portion of a pattern and in stocking stitch to see what adjustments you’ll need to make. I sometimes find, for example, that I need to go down as many as two needle sizes from what I used for colourwork to achieve the same tension in stocking stitch.

Secondly, it’s important to know if your row gauge is out for a pattern like the Yokey Dokey Sweater. While in some projects you can fairly easily correct for a different row gauge by simply knitting to a specified length, if your row gauge is very out with a project that involves working a set number of rounds (rather than to a set measurement), the fix is not so straightforward and you could end up with a yoke that’s too shallow or deep. Altering row gauge when your stitch gauge is correct is too big a topic to delve into in this post, but if you find yourself with this problem you might start by swatching again with a needle in a different material, or, if you’re still stuck, pop over to our Ravelry group (link to a classic look Ravelry page) and tap the collective expertise there!

And a final note of warning about colourwork swatches … once you start, it can be hard to stop! The Jamieson & Smith colours are so beautiful and complex, I found that every time I had a rifle in my yarn pantry, some new colour would catch my eye and would then need some friends to sit with … until suddenly my whole couch was covered in J&S balls! At the height of my Yokey Dokey swatching frenzy, my husband started letting out small groans every time my J&S bin made an appearance and politely asking just how many swatches I was going to knit so he could perhaps, ahem, sit on the couch again. As of this writing, I think I’ve knitted seven, and while I think I’ve just about settled on my final colours, I still have a few more colour combinations rattling around in my head all of which involve the wonderfully complex FC14mix as a main colour …

If you fancy knitting a Yokey Dokey yourself, we have a very few kits left in the Original pattern colourway, Dark Grey, and Brown options, or you could put together your own colourway … there’s oodles of J&S 2ply Jumper Weight in the online shop. If you’re unsure where to start and want to go on your own swatching adventures, our J&S starter bundles are a great way to build up your yarn pantry.