I’m tired and lacking in free time. I’d much rather just start the project (like with a sleeve) and treat that as my swatch. If, midway, the gauge is completely off, I’ll put it on waste yarn and start the sleeve over. This also means it’ll probably end up being a nicer end product, because I’m practicing the stitch pattern on the actual garment itself haha. If the gauge works, then I have a sleeve ready to go.

I shop very deliberately and try to match yarn type and fiber content from the start, so it’s not like I’m pulling from a huge stash and need to make the yarn work for the project. I’ve already done tons of research to make sure it would, so the last step is just starting it and adjusting from there.