Checking the thickness of your newly frogged thrifted sweater yarn…

I had a question from Annette about how to check the weight of your newly unravelled yarn. Well, here’s how I do it, but by no means is this a definitive way of finding your yarn thickness!

Here is the grey/blue merino I got from that vile jumper, all newly de-kinked and wound into lots of little balls (isn’t it lovely?):

Now I’m going to wrap it around a ruler. Starting one inch in, wrap your yarn around the ruler – making sure the wraps are touching, but not overlapping until you have covered a whole inch. Mine comes out at 18 wraps per inch (wpi).

Different books, websites, championship knitters often have slightly different ranges for weights of yarn, but generally speaking less than 5 wpi is super bulky, 6-7 is bulky, 8-9 is worsted/aran, 11-12 is dk/sport, 14 is 4-ply/fingering and 16-18 is baby/3-ply.

So, my lovely merino at 18 wpi is 3-ply :)

3-ply is usually knit using 3.25mm (US size 3) needles, so I could knit a tension square, write the gauge on a tag (it should be something like 32 stitches over 40 rows), and attach it to one of the balls so I don’t need to do it later. But I’m lazy. I’ll do it later.

Hope this helps!

Beccy

*Update* Ok, I caved and did a gauge swatch and it comes out at 30 stitches over 36 rows on 3.25mm. Aha, not so lazy as you thought!