fingers crossed....

There is a group of knitters in the Maritimes, Nova Scotia actually, and they are doing a Knitalong using an old pattern of mine, called Hood'sUp from Knitwords #22, Autumn 2002 - here's the link I gave you back in 2014 to their initial blogpost:

http://mkkal.blogspot.ca/

When they first asked for my permission back in 2014, they seemed to start off with a bang and then I never heard from them. http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/02/remake-of-remake.html
A couple of weeks ago I got an email titled Adventures in Machine knitting and what do you know? it was those knitters resurfacing and getting going again! They now have a ton of very interesting information about swatching, cleaning your machine etc that you might find interesting. The premise is not everyone has the same machine or yarn etc and they plan to explore options and all sorts.
 Anyway it seems whenever I join a KAL, it never works out or I just get tired of waiting for everyone else to get knitting so I'm going to just pretend to do this on my own and tell you about it here...
You may recall in the past year or more I had become obsessed with hoodies or was it that stitch pattern? ;-) Anyway, I took a hiatus from both and now I ready to go again! I want a light, summer-weight hoodie that I can use as a cover-up so I've inventoried my yarn stash and came up with some options - several lightweight cottons, linen blends and linen. Now, I don't want to have to re-design the original - I want to use the same shape file and the basic techniques, but I don't need to match the gauge exactly because I'll be working with my knit radar and all I have to do is plug in my new stitches and rows. BTW, I'm using my Manfriend Hoodie ( http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2015/06/manfriend-hoodie-pattern.html ) pattern (the girl version because this is for me!) - it is actually the updated 2015 version of Hood's Up. I ruled out the really fine stuff because it would be too complicated and have to totally be redesigned. I took the linens and the biggest problem is the amount required. I did use this yarn twice before - KW#47, Just the Flax (used 460g for the 4th size) and #49, Linen Spin (410g for 2nd size). Both of those, I used one of my one-row-tucks knit fairly loosely. Here's the link to one of my previous posts explaining 1RT: http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2014/03/1rt-raglan.html
Now, I had initially thought of lace when I decided on a summer-weight GFH but the linen is not conducive to lace carriage (too stiff - it does soften up nicely when washed though)) and I'm really not up to another Battenburg experience!
When I was in Dallas last month, one of the really great questions I got was 'how do I know how much more yarn I will need for swatching, planning etc?' Even though I've settled on this Linen - it's from Silk City/BTYarns/Knit It Now - 100% linen, 1750 yds/lb - I have a cone of brown and one of cilantro, each weighing 540g and I have a leftover 240g of the beige. I'm calling it lightweight because I am knitting it quite loosely - I did one swatch at T9 and another at T10, washed them and will wait for it to dry before deciding which to go with. I swatched with the beige, not wanting to waste the good yarn because I will be lucky (actually, really lucky) to get a hoodie out of one colour. My backup plan is to use a different colour for the bands - brown with beige bands would be fine and I have an almost-exact-colour match in Skinny Majesty for the cilantro linen. So my answer to the question was to use some other yarn to make sure your stitch pattern is good and then hopefully use another colour leftover of the same yarn for the actual swatch and also, have a backup plan in case you still do not have enough (shorter sleeves and optional hood!)