Swatch It!

Firstly, two snippets of news: the voting for Knitting Fiend's blog awards has now closed, and the results will be announced on the 6th. I am expecting to come second. Also, I have now switched to Blogger Beta, which probably won't make any difference to your reading enjoyment, except that the archives are now easier to get at.

It's been a bit of a rough week, because I foolishly enjoyed myself by having three lots of visitors last week. It was well worth it to see two of them, but I could have done without the Methodist minister turning up in the middle of my Friday afternoon nap, plonking himself down in the chair, and proceeding to tell me how awful his job is for the next half hour. I must have one of those faces...

Anyway, all this excitement meant that I wasn't really in a fit shape to work on anything larger than a swatch this week. So, I've spent the week producing samples to go with the latest round of sketches. I'd already sent three sketches of possible plus size items to Simply Knitting - they didn't need samples because I've worked with SK before. I'm also now submitting a dressy top and a sweater to Interweave Knits; a shrug and a man's sweater to Vogue Knitting; and a baby cardigan, a sweater, and a jacket to Knit Today. If you have fingers, prepare to cross them now :)

The beauty of swatching, of course, is instant gratification. You get to work on a small scale, not some huge and heavy piece of knitting, and after a few hours, you have a finished thing of beauty which you can admire. It's also brilliant for trying out new stitch patterns, which is also something I've been doing this week. Even with my befuddled brain, if I use enough row counters, stitch markers, and little bits of paper I can follow new patterns with only a minimum of frogging...

Their other benefit, when produced as a sample for editors, is that I can take my tension from them and start writing up the pattern, rather than selling the idea and then having to make a tension square when I'm itching to start the garment itself.

Tigger says, "See this claw? If you stop me sleeping on your yarn one more time, it's going right in the middle of that nice lacy pattern..."