Monday's Technique Tuesday: Swatches, Row Count

I can not say enough how important it is to swatch before you start.  With the excitement of a new project who wouldn't want to jump right in, but hold your horses, take a deep breath and swatch with your yarn and needles first.  Last time we looked at stitch count, and today we are going to look at row count.  Now some may say row count is not as important as stitch count, (sometimes I do feel that way), but when it comes to decreasing or increasing you should really have an accurate row count

We are going to look st the same swatch that we looked at for stitch count.

The length from top to bottom of the stockinette section is 4 inches:

Start at the bottom and count the stitches that forma a vertical row:

In this swatch there are 24 stitch in 4 inches:

Divide the number you got by the number of inches and there you have it your row count. for this swatch the row count is 6 rows per inch.  A helpful tip is to use a straight edge to line up you vertical row of stitched it allows you to better read the row you want to count.