Swatching Sunday: Vogue Knitting Stitchionary, Volume One

This is one of my New Year's Resolution's (which I will eventually commit to my blog.) I want to swatch on a regular basis, just for the practice. I was listening to Janey Szabo on Stash and Burn talk about the hours she spends swatching for her patterns and stitch dictionaries. She said that's what it takes for her to write her books. I already know from reading No Sheep For You that I should spend more time swatching to get to know yarns and fiber. So I decided I will spend time every Sunday swatching for the sake of learning.

I have a (very overdue) copy of Volume One of the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary that I borrowed from Gauge, and I decided to use it before returning it. (Hopefully sometime this week.)

All of these were made using cheap acrylic yarn I had lying around, along with size 7 aluminum needles from my Boye Needlemaster. All are unblocked.



This first one is the "Simple Slip Stitch (#4)." At least it is on the bottom. I had been reading about how slip stitches work well with variegated yarn, and I wanted something different than the brioche rib that I have used a lot lately.

The top part was where I tried to stagger to slip stitches. It didn't really work. It just made the fabric look wonky.



I tried to use a staggered slip stitch with a variegated yarn to see if it showed up better, It didn't really work.



I edited this photo a bit, but the stitches are still hard to see. I should have made this bigger.

This is "Woven Tile (#174.)" I think this stitch has potential for...something. I would adjust the extra wraps on the purl side rows to make the edges neater. Also, this is a "one-sided" stitch. I wonder if there is a way to make it reversible.