Leave Long Strands at the Back of Your Swatch

Use a circular needle and CO about 6" (15 cm) worth of stitches on the needle you hope to use for your project. Work a few rows in single-color stockinette or garter stitch to get things estab - lished (working back and forth in rows). Then knit your first color pattern row. Instead of turning your work to the wrong side to purl, slide the stitches back to the other end of the needle so that they’re positioned to begin working another RS row. Leaving strands of both color yarns loose across the back (the length of these strands should be about the width of the swatch), work Row 2 of your pattern, again on the right side. Repeat this until you’ve got about a 6" (15 cm) square of fabric. Then work a few rows in single-color stockinette or garter and bind off. You can then cut through the middle of the long strands and trim them, leaving the strands about 1" (2.5 cm) long so that the swatch lies flat, or, if you want to re-use your yarn, you can just leave the strands uncut. (If you don’t want to cut your strands, be extra careful that they’re long enough that they don’t draw your swatch in.) This method is great because it can give you a fairly accurate gauge measurement without you needing to knit an enormous swatch. The disadvantages are that the edge stitches can be very loose and that can be awkward as you work. It also means you need to make a swatch big enough that those wonky edge stitches won’t interfere with the center of the swatch, where you’ll measure your gauge.