Swatches for circular knitting

[knitlady]

Hi all--
I'm new to this forum--have been hand knitting all my life but haven't done much the last few years. I've gotten back into it and am wanting to do some Barbie Doll clothes out of leftover self patterning sock yarn. I'm going to do the circular (the tops anyway) and am wondering if I need to do the swatches circular as well? I'm using designing software(KnitWare) to design the outfits and the required gauge info is X st and rows in 4".

Should i do a swatch that is 4" wide on each side or can I just do a flat 4" swatch? The reason I ask is that I've heard on some other lists that most knitters have a different gauge doing circular than they do on flat because they purl at a different gauge than doing knit st.

I appreciate any anwers

Mellany

[Ingrid]

You can either do a circular swatch or a 'fake' circular swatch where you knit across on a dpn and then let the yarn drape across the back and knit across the row again after sliding it to the other end. This way all the stitches are knit.

For Barbie, though, I'd probably just start knitting and maybe do a gauge measure then.