Determining Yarn Weights

Hi there. I'm Corrina Ferguson for The Knitting Circle. In this video, we're gonna learn about how to determine the weight of your yarn, even if you don't have a label. So let's get started. Let's talk about getting to know your yarn, especially if your yarn doesn't have a label. There's tons of information on a yarn label, but if you don't have a label or you're gifted some yarn or you find some yarn in your stash that you've already taken the label off of, you have no idea what it is, there are some ways that you can figure it out. And one of the ways to find out if a yarn, for example, will be suitable for a project is figuring out the gauge or the wraps per inch. Wraps per inch is something where you figure out how many times it wraps around in an inch, just like it says. Gauge means you actually have to knit up a swatch, have an idea of what size in needles you're talking with, but wraps for inch is a great place to start. Spinners will also use wraps per inch to figure out what kind of weight of yarn that they've actually spun because that'll kind of vary. And the way that you do the wraps per inches, we're gonna wrap around something and then we're just gonna measure it. There are seven main types of yarn that'll be on a yarn label. We have the lace, which is kind of our skinniest thing. There's cobweb that kind of comes before this, but lace is very common and cobweb, not so much. Number one is super fine, which is our fingering or sock weight yarn. You'll notice it tells you a wraps per inch and a gauge suggestion for each of these things, and this sheet right here is actually a download that you can get so you can have this little cheat sheet for yourself. Fine is a sport weight, 15 to 18 wraps per inch, five and three quarters to six stitches per inch. Light is a decay or double knitting. Four is a medium or worsted. Aran kind of fits in between worsted and bulky. It's a little bit bigger than worsted, but not quite bulky. Five is bulky. Six is super bulky. And sometimes you'll see a seven, which is, I think they call a giant, which is the needles that are so big that they're just like, you know, you feel like, I don't know, something out of a fairy tale. So we're going to skip that. But, you go with your wraps per inch, you go with your gauge. So let's go ahead and we're gonna grab a yarn and we're going to see what the wraps per inch are and what we would think that the gauge would be. Okay, this monster. I am gonna guess, obviously, that this is in the bulky or super bulky family. Once you learn more about yarn, you'll be able to look at something and say, "Oh, that's worsted weight", or "That might be a decay weight". The more you learn, the better, the better you get. But sometimes you just have yarn and you're like "What the heck is this?" So, we are going to do a wrap test and we're going to wrap the yarn around the needle. I'm gonna get the yarn out of the way here and kind of show you. We'll do it this way so we have the end. I've got my thumb on it and we're gonna wrap it so that it sits next to each other but it's not too tight and it's not squishing the next loop, but we also don't want big gaps in it. Obviously that's gonna lie to us. So I like to do a good bit and then I'm gonna grab... This is a needle gauge and it also has a two inch measure on it, so I'm gonna grab and kind of put the inch in the middle. I don't want the ones on the very end. And it's the same way that when you measure gauge swatches you don't want the gauge off the stitches at the very ends 'cause those can be looser or tighter. The ones in the middle will give you a more accurate thing. So I'm gonna kind of line this up so I can see. We're gonna count. One, two, three, four, five. Is that what we're getting there? About five? So, if I get six or less wraps per inch, I'm in super bulky territory which totally makes sense for this crazy big yarn. So let's try it with something that's a little finer. Now, I happen to know that this is worsted weight 'cause I've been using it for lots of videos, but let's see if it does the wrapping the way that we expect. So, this one we're gonna have to wrap a bunch more times because it tells you that a medium is gonna expect somewhere in the neighborhood of nine to 11 wraps. And like I said, you don't want to wrap it too tight 'cause you don't want to constrict the yarn any, but you're basically just gonna get it around, around, around, around, and then I kinda like to line it up. I do a bunch, kinda line it up there, and we can see what we actually get. Need a little more yarn here. Yarn, yarn, and yarn. This is the boring part of the video. Okay, so, we're going to give this a little tug so we can keep it tight. And like I said, I'm gonna kind of go in the middle here and we can see that I'm gonna start one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Kind of getting 12 there. Let's smooth this out a little bit more. Make sure there's no gaps. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Well, then I get 11. And this is actually a little bit of a thinner worsted weight so actually that makes sense to be at that top end. And that tells me that I should be able to easily knit this at four and a half to five stitches per inch. So let's grab a swatch of this fabric. This is that yarn on a size seven needle, which is kind of middle of the road for that yarn. So I'm gonna get my little cheat sheet out of the way and we're gonna measure here in the middle. This is two inches. So, let's grab here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I'm getting nine in between my little two-inch mark, so that is a four and a half stitches per inch. So let's check our sheet. We had 11 wraps to the inch, four and a half stitches per inch. Right on target for what I would consider a worsted weight yarn. So the wraps per inch is a great way for you to know how big your yarn is. Thank you so much for joining me to learn about yarn weights. Check out our website for more great videos.