2022 Geek-A-Long: Swatching for socks (you really do have to do it)

Welcome back to sock-school fibermancers! This week we are continuing our sock lesson series as we lead up to the 2022 Geek-A-Long: The year of the sock. If you are just joining us, you can catch up with the articles on Sock Anatomy, Sock Needles, and Sock Yarn by clicking the links. Today we are going to cover the highly contentious topic of knitting sock swatches.

Real talk: I absolutely hate knitting swatches. I hate it. I don’t know why. There is just something about knitting a useless little square when what I want to be making is my actual project that makes me so aggravated. A few years back I started knitting functional swatches, and that took the edge off. Not totally gone, but reduced. I say this so you know that I wouldn’t tell you that you absolutely have to knit a swatch unless it were true. A best case scenario here is that you don’t hate swatching as much as me. But if you do, and you are already thinking of all the reasons you do NOT need to knit a swatch just to make socks, I have prepared a photo story of my own swatchless disaster. You do not need to face a wretched future of ill-fitting socks! Just make the swatch.

A color work swatch serves 2 primary functions:

Stitch and Row Gauge. Every knitter’s stitch and row gauge change naturally over time and as a reaction to environmental shifts. This might be the only absolute truth in knitting. Your knitting can and will change. When you first started knitting it probably took a while for your tension and gauge to even out. That process never actually stops. Even if you are using a yarn you’ve used before, and needles you’ve used – Even if you literally just knit a pair of socks with these needles and that yarn, your gauge can change between the second sock of the last pair and the first sock of this new pair. On top of that, there are countless external factors that can temporarily impact your gauge. Do you have a lot of stress in your life right now? A paper cut on your finger? A crick in your neck or lots of distractions? All of these (and a million other things) can cause a temporary change in the way you hold or tension your yarn. Even a tiny change will have an impact on the knitted fabric.

Socks need to fit really well. A sock that’s just a smidge too big will slide around on your foot. A sock that’s just a 1/4 inch too small will choke your toes. Stranded colorwork has very little stretch. When done well it has some stretch, but not much compared to other types of knitting. A perfectly tailored sock is a beautiful thing to behold. It will improve your whole day. You deserve a perfectly fitted sock.

Let’s look at that in practice. Recently, I started working on a sock version of the Arrrgyle Vest (I just put that in testing, pattern coming later this year!). I played it fast and loose. I went rogue. I am the night. I am batman! Ahem. Anyways, I thought, “meh, I have knit dozens of socks. I have knit SO MANY THINGS. I do not need to swatch.”

Why yes. That sock is 10 inches in circumference. Reader: I wear an 8.5″ sock. I don’t know what was going on in my life to make my gauge change that much, but there we were. I wanted to wear this sock on my foot and not as a comically small hat, so it was frog o’clock.

In addition to not being a comfortable fit, if your sock is too small, all that gorgeous gorgeous color work you took the time and energy to knit will be stretched right out of existence. Next week I’m going to release a pattern for a Geek-A-Long “warm up sock”. The Shifter Sock pattern is meant to help you practice your sock skills before we get into the real GAL patterns for the year. Here is the swatch for the Shifter Socks shown on a cup that they fit, and a cup that’s too big for the zarf. For reference, there is only a 1/2″ difference in the circumference of these cups:

Color Testing: The second function of your swatch is to test if your colors work well together. You’d be surprised how often colors look completely different in the skein, and then you start knitting and can’t see your beautiful color work because the contrast isn’t high enough. You should always run a grayscale test on yarn before you even start your swatch. The step that is often skipped is running another after knitting the swatch. To run a grayscale test, photograph the 2 skeins in natural light. Then filer the photo into grayscale or black and white. Do the colors still look completely different? If not, you need to choose a new color that does pass the test. Run that test again on the swatch to make sure.

After accepting that my Swashbuckler sock was way too big, I caved and knit a swatch. It didn’t pass the grayscale test (even though the yarn balls had!) so I swapped out the green and took the opportunity to change my needle size before taking gauge again.

It still didn’t pass the grayscale! I had to accept that the pink was the problem. I absolutely LOVE Witchlight pink, but there was nothing to be done for it. If I wanted green, the pink had to go. I swapped one more time to combine the 2 greens, and the end result was a well fitting sock that actually showed the colorwork.

Even yarn witches have to swatch. Consider it part of your fiber magic ritual. I’ll be back here this time next week to talk about how to read a color work chart, and the Shifter Socks will be released on Ravelry and here on the blog to get you started on your year of fabulous nerdy socks.

~Megan-Anne

Gorgeous gorgeous girls make swatches.

P.S. The Shifter Socks are an “unofficial” Geek-A-Long practice pair. Just like the actual GAL socks they’ll be free, and available both here and on Ravelry, but they are not reflective of this year’s nerd theme. I say that now to save you the pain and heartache of trying to read a coded message in them. We will reveal the theme for our year of socks on 3/20, along with the unveiling of some cool new GAL kits!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. Here is a direct link to our official donation page benefiting the charity. Please help us raise $1,000 this year. No contribution is too small! Wanna make your donation go even further? Lattes & Llamas will donate $1 for every skein of Geek-A-Long Yarn purchased.