skip the chatter and jump to swatch specifics ↴

Many swatches happen because I’m working on something else and wonder … what if.

Currently, I’m knitting several blankets in dk weight — either in actual dk or with a fingering held doubled. I love the feel and the squish.

There’s a crochet blanket I’m working on in a fingering weight yarn and while I love it, I’m not in love with it. After my initial honeymoon period with the project, I’ve found everything else more exciting to work on. In its current iteration it’s an incredibly massive project, not simply the physical size of the blanket, but that I need to crochet 400 motifs. As I found more and more excuses not to work on it, I began to wonder what would help me simply finish?

So, I began to wonder what if I held yarns doubled and made larger motifs? I love working with fingering weight yarns and my preferred hook size is 3.75mm. This is a strong preference, it’s my go-to and I don’t need to think.

I could work dk with that size hook, but I know I want a blanket that is squishy and snuggly, not stiff. So I found my beloved 4.5mm Clover Soft Touch hook¹. Honestly, it feels awkward and big in my hand at first. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with this size hook.

Dot, my helpful feline assistant, curled up on my lap to make sure I focused. It also felt weird to work with the yarn doubled — I knit this way often, but it’s not how I crochet motifs. I’ve been making granny squares from light sport weight yarn since the very beginning of my crochet journey. Anything bulkier feels weird.

I kept with the same sock yarns scraps and for the first two rounds, I made sure that while the two strands were different colourways, the families and tones were similar. For the third round I was able to hold the same yarn doubled. The photo below shows Dot on my lap and I’m in the middle of the third round of the motif. The initial round is blue-green, the second of blues with tan, and the third is aqua with purple.

At this point, I didn’t like it and was finishing it for the sake of this post. The point of swatching is to find out if I like it! What was wrong? It was very stiff, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the way the colours played off each other.

I persevered.

I like the effect a solid grey border makes, so the fourth and fifth rounds were straightforward and quite easy to work as I have many balls of grey.

It looked better at this point, but I wasn’t sure if I liked it².

I left it on my notebook and looked at it for a while (pictured above). And I would occasionally pick it up and play with it while working on other projects. It is definitely larger and squishier, and closer to what I have in mind for these very cold days and curling up under the eventual blanket. But it didn’t yet feel “right”.

Yesterday, it was time to wash a few pairs of socks so I tossed the swatch in too and hoped for the best. As I suspected would happen, it immediately softened up and I love it.

This swatch doesn’t need formal blocking³, hanging it from a clothes pin is good enough.

It looks good and it’s larger than the motifs I was creating. Even better it has some squish.

1. If you want me to carry these hooks in my favourite sizes, please let me know. ↩︎
2. The reason I was unsure of this swatch was because I worked it in hdc instead of dc. No wonder it wasn’t much larger and it was stiffer than the single strand motifs! ↩︎
3. formal blocking in this case can be defined as laying flat and possibly pinned to specific dimensions to dry. There’s discussion that insists this makes it easier to join motifs. Honestly I don’t find that’s the case for me. As this is destined for a blanket as long as each motif ends up about the same size that’s good enough. It will be stretched and snuggled, and blocking isn’t critical. ↩︎
4. The reason I was unsure of this swatch was because I worked it in hdc instead of dc. No wonder it wasn’t much larger and it was stiffer than the single strand motifs! ↩︎