Did the Designer Include Enough Yarn to Swatch?

I often hear this question in one form or another: When the designer wrote the yardage requirements for this knitting pattern, did they include yarn for swatching?

The answer, as with so many things in knitting, is, “It depends.”

Yes, the designer should have included excess yardage in their requirements. Industry standard, in as much as there is such a thing, is 10-15% beyond what it took to actually knit the sample. And a designer who cares for your sanity will figure that number including what it takes to make a reasonable swatch. I do that, because I think there is nothing quite so frustrating as running short of yarn.

But my swatch may not be the same size as your swatch. Sure, we’re told to make a swatch that’s larger than 4 x 4″ — one that includes enough extra stitches to be able to measure that swatch without distortion from the edges. But did we? Did we really? If gauge varies among knitters (which of course it does), the size of swatch we choose to do varies even more.

Which is to say, most designers have probably included enough extra yardage for you to work your swatch. And even if they haven’t, that extra 10-15% should cover you. But of course gauge plays a role — a big one — in determining how much yarn you will actually use. If your work in progress is turning out larger than anticipated, you run the risk of running out of yarn.

Kind designers will let you know if your yardage could run tight in the pattern notes. And just in case, I always keep my swatch in the same bag with my project in case I need to frog it to reclaim that yarn for the project. But if it’s a rare yarn, one I can’t get more of, I buy an extra skein if I can afford it, just to be sure. (Which explains the plethora of single skeins hanging about the stash, as well as my penchant for writing single-skein patterns to use them up.)

All this came to mind as I was reviewing the yardage for the pattern I just released, Powderbowl. It comes in two sizes, one of which is 2.33 times the length of the other. If we multiply the yardage of the smaller size by 2.33, we’re going to get a yardage requirement that’s more than it needs to be, because the yardage for the smaller size includes enough yarn to swatch with, but the swatch doesn’t get 2.33 times bigger when you knit the bigger size! So my yardage requirement for the infinity size cowl is slightly less than 2.33 times the yardage for the standard cowl.

Some tech editors hate me for this. They will do the simple math and call it wrong.

But as a designer, I’m trying to write patterns that give information in ways that are the most useful and reasonable for the most knitters. I try to walk the line between calling for enough yarn that you won’t run out and not wanting to cause you to buy more than you need. I always add that extra 15% into my yardage estimates, and I always include enough yarn for a generous gauge swatch. I can’t speak for all designers, but that’s what you can count on from me.