Swatches and More Swatches

My mother is visiting me right now and the whole time she has been here, I have been swatching. She wants everyone to know that she did not raise me to be the Swatch Nazi. She made her first swatch only recently. (Of course, I told her to make the swatch.) She is a quilter much more than a knitter. But recently she accidentally made a king-sized quilt when she intended to make a queen.....What more can I say?

So here are some swatches. I am on my fifth. First I knit two stockinette swatches and ended up happy with 14.5 sts over 4 inches. Then, Wendy and I both struggled with the "Fancy Rib". The pattern says to:

"pass right needle behind first stitch on left needle, knit second stitch, then knit first stitch, drop both stitches off left needle."

This is not easy to do without knitting the stitch you reach around for through the back loop. (You are presumably supposed to knit it through the front loop, practically impossible.) I tried the back loop way and got this:

23 st over 4"

Kind of mushy and tight and the gauge is way off. Then I read in someone's blog that if you rearrange the stitches by "slipping the first st as if to purl and slip the next as if to knit and then put them back on the left needle and then complete the stitch" it would work better. I tried it and got this:

18 sts over 4"

Much better. More defined. Better gauge. Who would have thought that one twisted stitch would have such an effect. But being the SN I am, I am going to do one more with smaller needles. Just to be sure.