How To Swatch In The Round

We’ve had a few questions lately about swatching in the round.  Today we’re going to give you directions on one way to do it. As with most techniques in knitting there is more than one way that works; if you have a way that gives you good results we urge you to stick with it!

If you’re knitting any type of project in the round and you are going to swatch before you start, it’s important to do that swatch ‘in the round’.  

When you create something in stockinette stitch knitting flat, you knit a combination of two rows; a knit row and then a purl row to create the stockinette fabric.

When knitting in the round, you only work knit stitches, no purl stitches, to create a stockinette fabric.  Most often our purl stitches have a slightly different gauge than our knit stitches; usually they are looser.  You can see where this would affect your overall gauge and why it would be different knitting flat from in the round.

In order to make an appropriate swatch, you need to work only knit stitches. However, there is no need to cast on enough stitches to join in the round on a 16” circular needle and then knit for about four inches.  That would be overkill and totally unnecessary!  

Here’s how you do it:

Cast on about 30 stitches or so onto a circular needle and knit the first row.  You’ll find as you go that the edge stitches will be super loose. You can either leave them or tug them tighter as you go along.  You will be measuring the middle of your swatch so be sure it’s large enough to ignore those edge stitches.

After you have knit the first row, this is where you’d normally turn and work a purl row for knitting flat.  Here’s the trick, don’t turn your work. Slide it down to the other end of the needle. Your working yarn will be on the far left side and will come around the back of your work to knit the next row.  The first stitch will be fiddly. There will be a long float in the back as you can tell by the photos!

Always work with the knit stitches facing you.  When you have finished knitting a row, slide your work to the other end of the needle, carry the yarn loosely along the back, and knit another row!  Keep going until your swatch is the size you want and bind off. It doesn’t matter how you bind off; this is only a swatch!

If you carry the yarn loosely enough, it will not cause the fabric to roll in towards the back and it will be easy to rip the whole thing out if you want to reuse the yarn.  If you don’t carry it loosely enough, you’ll need to cut the floats in the middle, creating a fringe along the edge, in order for the swatch to lie flat as it’s drying.

Through trial and error we have found that it’s easy to underestimate the length of yarn you need for the floats in the back so leave plenty!

You can now make a quick swatch in the round!  Happy swatching! We’d love to hear how yours turns out!

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