Knitting a Swatch For Trove

I’m always on the lookout for interesting sweater pattern to knit. I’m not an expert so I’m always looking at difficulty too.

The Trove pullover pattern is made up of slip stitch rows with alternating colors. The pattern interests me because I can use up some of my J&S wool.

I bought the pattern and knitted up a swatch. The pattern says to use Sport weight yarn, but I want to use fingering and DK. I went up a needle size to do the swatch, hoping this will work out.

After knitting a few rows, I wanted to see if the knitting was close to 4 inches across, and it is. The real measurement will be done after washing and blocking, but if this was really off, I would not continue with this needle size.

The colors I grabbed may not be the ones I use to knit the sweater. This is a trial piece, and a good time to try out colors.

How I Knit My Swatch

It took me a bit to figure out how to knit the swatch, so I will share how I did it here.

I cast on 23 stitches. The gauge swatch should be 22 stitches across, but the swatch needed to be an odd number to work out knitting flat (or so it seemed to me).

Knitting swatch for Trove — Swatch for Trove, after washing

Each section is four rows of knitting, and rows can be easily counted when you remember that. 40 rows long should be 4 inches, so do 10 repeats of the 4 row count to equal 40 rows. In my swatch you may be able to see the 10 colored rows (those colors are actually 2 rows of knitting).

After casting on, I knit back and forth, then did a purl row so the “Dotted Stripes Stitch” begins on the right side (RS) – as it will when knitting the sweater. Usually I have 3 extra stitches on each side of my swatch, but I did not do that this time.

Measuring My Gauge

This is my Trove sweater swatch after washing and blocking to dry. Gauge in the pattern is 22 stitches by 40 rows in four inches of knitting. My stitches are pretty much exact. I have one extra (23 total) stitches in my swatch.

The row gauge is short, so I will have to watch the length of things when I knit. It is better to have stitches correct, as the length can be dealt with more easily.

The Advantage of Knitting With Wool

When, and if, I do get around to knitting the sweater, I will alternate skeins of wool – Jamieson & Smith, and Rauma – by spit splicing (no ends to weave in!) to alternate the colors. I will be using more than the 5 colors suggested.

The main color will be Jamieson’s lavender – pink color. I bought a bunch of skeins to knit something else, then decided I didn’t really like the yarn for that project. I think it will work well for Trove.

wool yarn skeins — Wool colors used in the swatch

Jamieson’s DK yarn pink lavender — Wool colors used in the swatch

Notes and Suggestions From Knitters

I’m always grateful for knitters who bother to leave truthful comments about their experience with knitting a pattern. Some things I noticed while reading comments about Trove were that the sleeves are too wide. Also the neck tends to be too loose and wide. These are a couple of things I can be aware of when knitting my own sweater.

Can a Beginner Knit this Pattern?

If this is your first sweater, or you have not been knitting long, this one might be a challenge. I mainly say this because if you need to make changes to the pattern, a beginner might not know what to do. I have not knit it yet, but maybe a solid color pattern would work better for a beginner knitter. I’ve had a lot of luck knitting the free sweater patterns by Espace Tricot.

Link to Trove pattern page at Ravelry. Have you knit Trove? In the midst of knitting it? I’d love to hear what you think.