What a Life!

I started swatching for St. Brigid last night.

Yes, I’m swatching…but for more reasons than just getting gauge. I’m trying to decide what color yarn I want to use…in fact, what yarn to use.

The two colors I have in the Classic Elite Skye Tweed are medium dark and light. I’m thinking the cables would show up more with the lighter color because the shadows would accentuate them – shadows aren’t as visible with darker colors. I also, in my many Google searches, have read about knitters using yarn such as Cascade 220 and Plymouth Galway with good results.

I started swatching, first with some leftover Cascade 220 in my stash in two colors – a dark blue and a medium heather blue. Then I got out some Plymouth Galway in a sea green and swatched with it. Finally, I swatched with the sage Classic Elite Skye Tweed – I wanted to see how the tweed flecks looked and whether they’d detract from the sweater (vs. a solid color).

Here you can see the swatches all lined up. Do you notice the cables more in some colors than in others?

From the top down, the yarns used in the swatches are Classic Elite Skye Tweed Sage, Plymouth Galway, Cascade 220 (dark blue), Cascade 220 (medium heather blue).

Let’s just say that swatching can reveal facts that otherwise might have never crossed your mind. In this case…how the fabric drapes. Pre-blocking, the Cascade 220 was the softest and draped the nicest. Plymouth Galway was a close second, but the stitches were a bit more pronounced than I’d like. The Classic Elite Skye Tweed certainly brings out the pattern of the stitches, but it tends to be…shall we say, stiff?

And stiff, in this case, meant the Classic Elite Skye Tweed swatch measured a full three-quarter inch larger than the other three. Pre-blocking. Here you can see them stacked with the Skye Tweed on the bottom.

Now once I washed them and blocked them, they were all about the same size. They haven’t dried yet, though, so I don’t know how they feel.

The stiffness of the Skye Tweed is making me a bit nervous. This sweater is long and has seven or eight inches of ease. If the fabric drapes nicely, that isn’t such a big deal. But I’m afraid that if it is stiff, I’ll look like a whale.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the Skye Tweed. I simply think it would be better suited to a more standard fitted (vs. oversized) project with some shaping in it. In fact, I think shaping would work especially well with this yarn because it wouldn’t get lost with the movement of the sweater.

St. Brigid is straight on the sides with no shaping at all. Because of all the stitch patterns, the style simply doesn’t lend itself well to shaping. Now an adapted Aran style sweater where you changed the cables to create shaping rather than keeping them the same throughout would work well and still give the yarn an opportunity to show off the stitch patterns.

It’s certainly possible that the Skye Tweed may soften now that I’ve washed and blocked it. It will take a good twenty-four hours for my swatches to dry so we won’t know until sometime tomorrow.

So for now, it’s back to my Bells & Whistles socks where I’m almost ready to turn the heel on the first sock.