2014/06/03:

Done! Actually Laurie finished her swatch on 2014/05/31 but I wasn’t able to be there for the cast-off.

The knitting sample is 18” long and the crochet is 15”. Width’s are close. The crochet sample is curling, so I measured from the middle of the swatches.

Neither swatch was washed. Neither swatch was blocked.

A difference of 3” means I would need 1/5th, or 20% more yarn, at least in those stitches.

2014/05/20:

Having recently been exposed to the “Oh, crochet uses 1/3rd more yarn than knitting” “common wisdom”, I went looking and found FearlessLeaderCLF’s blog posting on that very subject: http://www.crochetliberationfront.com/2012/02/clf-myth-bu...

As I was in Kid Ewe Knot when I last heard that claim, I asked LaurieG63, a co-owner, if we could do some science and try to reproduce Laurie Wheeler’s results. Laurie G went to the back of the shop to get some yarn for the test. Using a precision scale we divided it in half, 39g each (the skein was not full).

This is the crochet half of the test:
19 sc across
70 rows (plus a few into row 71)

I’ll measure the size in inches when Laurie G finishes her swatch in knitting (same width).

The goal is to have the swatches in the store, along with tags describing the details of each swatch, so that customers could see ‘hands on’ how much fabric you get from each technique. (the tags shown in the photos are just temporary)