Four of the swatches I'm going to need to submit are supposed to be done with the same yarn and same size needles, basically as a set - and it struck me that these four swatches would be a pretty good diagnostic.



Seed stitch. Nice and even. When I hold it up to the light there's only one "hole" that seems bigger than the others, maybe two. Given that this is my first shot at the seed stitch swatch, and most people seem to have more trouble with it than with any of the others, that's probably a pretty good sign. The catch is: I seem to have cast on too loosely. There's visible gaps between the cast-on row stitches, and the purl bumps that were made from those stitches are a little lumpy.



Stockinette stitch, back side of swatch. The big problem here - if you look at the edge of the swatch that's towards the top of the photos, there's these vertical lines running through it. Oddly, these go away as you get towards the other end of the swatch - there must be something funny about how I tension my yarn near the beginning of the row? Also, my 1x1 ribbing could probably be a little less sloppy, but if you knit your ribbing on the same needles as your stockinette stitch it will always look sloppy by comparison. All things considered this may be perfectly cromulent 1x1 ribbing.



Garter stitch. My garter stitch is awesome. It is all purls rather than all knits but I don't think that will make a difference. What is not awesome is the 2x2 ribbing at the bottom of the swatch / right of the screen: the second stitch of each pair is really loose. Advice on fixing this varies from "Try Combination knitting" to "Yank just a bit as you switch from knit to purl" to some techniques from TechKnitter that seem to involve running that stitch down and laddering it back up with a crochet hook.



Horseshoe cable. Just a big mess - I don't think those holes are supposed to be there, nor the vertical lines down the middle of each cable. I was using a really skinny cable needle and I wonder if that threw me off - I should see if I can find a standard DPN a couple sizes smaller than the needles I'm knitting with. Also, same problems with rowing out at one end of the stockinette stitch and loose stitches at the knit-to-purl transition, but even worse.

So. That's where I am. Let's see where I can get to...

...also, I've started writing the research paper. I have several paragraphs on Putting Thy Knits Into Storage For Ye Summer. I got distracted researching moth repellents - the good news is that there are, indeed, some proven ones, but the bad news is that they're also human repellents. The ultimate takeaway might be "If you like lavender and/or cedar, go ahead, won't hurt anything, your knits will come out of storage smelling like something other than musty sheep, but they're not miracle cures."

So far I've gotten to look through and evaluate two big comprehensive knitting reference books from the library, in the name of picking one or the other to buy: the Reader's Digest Knitter's Handbook (1993 edition) by Montse Stanley, and Principles of Knitting (2012 edition) by June Hemmons Hiatt. I'm not 100% thrilled with either one.

Big problem with the Reader's Digest book: I don't always grok Stanley's diagrams. I looked at her descriptions of some kinds of increases and wasn't 100% sure what she was talking about, or how the diagram related to the text that referred to it.

Big problem with Principles of Knitting: Hiatt has decided that a lot of terminology commonly used by knitters is insufficiently precise (e.g. the term "front" can mean several different things when you're knitting a sweater) and so wrote the book using her own - admittedly precise! - terminology. I looked at her descriptions of some kinds of increases and wasn't 100% sure what she was talking about until I did a lot of cross-referencing. (This was another reason I'd dismissed Katharina Buss's book - it may be from lousy translation, since I think it was originally written in German, but things in the book weren't called what "everyone" calls them...) Possibly another big problem: the "big" problem. It's huge - nearly 700 slightly-oversized pages. Serious blunt force trauma potential. Do not drop on your toes. Also not something that can easily be tucked into your knitting bag. (eBook edition, anyone?)

The books are definitely aimed at different audiences - Stanley seems to aim more for the Ordinary Average Knitter, while Principles of Knitting could be used as a textbook for a college-level course in textiles. If I had to buy one of them today, it would probably be Principles - I'd rather have idiosyncratic terminology than unclear diagrams, and she also talks about around-the-neck tensioning as a thing rather than just mentioning that people do it that way in some parts of the world. Also, as noted by a Raveler - most of the stuff I'd be looking for in the Reader's Digest book can be found elsewhere, especially if I don't limit myself to dead-tree books, but there is nothing nearly as encyclopedic as Principles of Knitting.

I know there's a newer edition of Montse Stanley's book - I'm ordering it through Interlibrary Loan, in case the updated edition. (I love ILL. ILL is amazing.) Also, it turns out that the Ann Arbor library has a copy of the Vogue Knitting Ultimate Knitter's Handbook - just not on the shelf right now. It seems like a lot of these knitting references are in high demand, so I won't be able to continually renew any of the books...I'll just have to keep putting requests in, if I need to hang on to one for a while.

(Actually this is Step 4 in the suggested plan of action...)

Acquire sheet protectors: Done!

Print out instructions for insertion into sheet protectors: Done!

Acquire mass quantity of pins for blocking: Done!

Check out Montse Stanley's book from library: Done-ish. It's the 1993 edition instead of the 1999. Knitting hasn't changed that much, has it?

Place June Hiatt's book on hold at the library: Done! I should get a copy to look at next month sometime. (and as long as it took her to revise the book, maybe knitting has changed that much...)

Realize that I picked up another highly recommended but hard to find knitting reference from a remaindered book table for $5, and might have given it away to the used bookstore because I figured if it was on the remaindered book table for $5, it wasn't too terribly good, because I can't find it anywhere in the house: D'oh!ne. Hopefully it ended up in a box other than the knitting-book box when I moved and is still waiting to be unpacked.

Realize that the library's copy of said hard-to-find book went walkabout: Also D'oh!ne. (All the best hard-to-find knitting books seem to vanish from the library shelves [see also: just about every book by Alice Starmore before the reprints started coming out]. Hopefully this will not happen to both of the library's two copies of Principles of Knitting before my hold comes up. I'm optimistic, since a) it no longer counts as hard-to-find, and b) I'm first hold in the queue.)

(Said hard-to-find knitting book is, for what it's worth, Katherina Buss's "Big Book of Knitting". If you can pick up a copy from a remaindered book table for $5, it is worth more than you paid for it. Also, "queue" is fun to type.)

Receive "Finishing School" and "Cast On, Bind Off" as Christmas gifts from relatives who didn't know I was doing the certification: Done, and a happily useful surprise.

Looking ahead to the Cable-Of-Your-Choosing Swatch, I went through the pages of my Vogue Stitch-A-Day calendar from a couple years ago and sorted them into category. I think the "Basic Braid" cable will meet the requirements. If not, there are many other stitch dictionaries out there; the trick will be finding a cable pattern skinny enough to fit two horizontal repeats plus borders into 24-32 stitches.

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Next up: "Select Yarn". Since the swatches will all be judged on blocking, wool would seem to be the best choice. I've got some Patons Classic Wool in stash to play with. I might also stop by the LYS tomorrow to see what they recommend for a Real Simple Plain Ol' Not Heathered Or Tweeded Or Remotely Fuzzy Worsted Weight Wool.