Would you swatch for a hat

“If you’re making a hat, do you have to swatch?”

This came up in a recent knitting session. A small question, you might think. We were only talking about a hat. But put a few knitters together and there is quite a lot to say about a hat.

One person said that if they were knitting it from the top down, they might not. They could try it on as they went.

Another said they had a particularly big head, so yes, they would definitely swatch. They also rarely use the suggested yarn (or even a pattern), so they want to know how their chosen yarn will behave.

I probably wouldn’t. But I would be prepared to cast on again if it didn’t work out.

This is where knowing yourself comes in. I enjoy knitting. If I undo a hat and knit it again, I get more knitting. I can see that this might not be everyone’s idea of a satisfactory outcome.

You may quite reasonably want a hat. Perhaps you have a cold head, or you promised it to someone, or even you’d like to finish this one so you can get on with the other seventeen things you want to make. Spending some time checking your tension at the beginning might suit you much better than discovering halfway through that you’re making something for a considerably larger person.

But if I were making a hat for a paid commission, I would absolutely swatch. I’d want the fit and the fabric to be right. “Let’s see what happens” would be rather less helpful in those circumstances. Same me, different answer.

And then there’s the yarn. There is always the yarn. How well do you know it? Have you used it before? Do you know what happens when it’s washed, or are you hoping for the best? How much of your confidence comes from experience, and how much comes from really wanting to cast on?

I do understand the wanting to cast on.

Experience gives us useful information. We begin to recognise how yarns behave, what sort of fabric we like and when something looks a bit doubtful. We also learn which adventures we’re willing to have.

Mohair, for instance, would make me reconsider my relaxed attitude to starting again. All that "lovely" fluff can become remarkably attached to itself. If undoing the knitting is going to involve persuading each stitch to let go of its neighbour, I might prefer to do a little investigating first.

So it comes down to choice and commitment. What are you committing your time and yarn to, and how happy will you be if it needs another go?

Making a swatch gives you information to help with that decision. It doesn’t guarantee that everything will go perfectly afterwards. Knitting still has plenty of opportunities to surprise us. But you can find out something about your tension and your fabric before you have most of a hat on the needles.

Equally, you might decide that you’re comfortable starting and checking as you go, knowing that you may need to undo it. That’s a choice too. It helps to have acknowledged the undoing part before it happens.

I think the person who asked the question was still going to make their hat without swatching. They had a clearer idea of when they might want to make one, though. And the conversation about trying on a top-down hat had given them something else to consider for the future.

I enjoyed that. Someone asked a question, we shared our different reasons, and another possibility appeared.

That’s one of the pleasures of knitting with other people. You get to borrow a little of their experience without having to knit everything they’ve ever knitted. Although you may leave wanting to.

Would I swatch for a hat? It depends. How attached am I to getting it right first time? And how attached is the yarn likely to be to itself?

And is this my honest truth - maybe I will confess in my next Stitching my Story!

Nessa

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