Hilltop Cloud
  • About
    • Dugoed
  • Shop
    • Fibre
    • Tools
    • Handspun Yarn
    • Hand Turned Tools
    • Bags and Needle Cases
  • Fibre Clubs
    • Time Travellers Club >
      • TT Club Spinning Hints
    • Never Ending Gradient Club
    • Non-Wool Club
  • Online Courses
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Hilltop Cloud Community
  • Workshops
  • Shows
  • Spinning Hand Dyed Fibre
  • Packaging
  • Fibres
    • Bases
    • Gradient Packs
    • Tussah Silk
    • Silk Road
    • Nordic
    • Fibre Care
  • Resources
    • Videos
    • Garment Spinning
    • Flyers and Ratios
    • Skein Length
    • Plying Twist
    • Samples
  • Hand Dyed Warps
  • Accessibility
  • About
    • Dugoed
  • Shop
    • Fibre
    • Tools
    • Handspun Yarn
    • Hand Turned Tools
    • Bags and Needle Cases
  • Fibre Clubs
    • Time Travellers Club >
      • TT Club Spinning Hints
    • Never Ending Gradient Club
    • Non-Wool Club
  • Online Courses
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Hilltop Cloud Community
  • Workshops
  • Shows
  • Spinning Hand Dyed Fibre
  • Packaging
  • Fibres
    • Bases
    • Gradient Packs
    • Tussah Silk
    • Silk Road
    • Nordic
    • Fibre Care
  • Resources
    • Videos
    • Garment Spinning
    • Flyers and Ratios
    • Skein Length
    • Plying Twist
    • Samples
  • Hand Dyed Warps
  • Accessibility

Measuring Yarn Thickness

24/8/2014

 
This post works rather well with the article I wrote on measuring the length of your skein of yarn.After all, once you've finished spinning a skein of yarn the most useful thing you can know about it is how much you have, and how thick it is. Armed with that information you can go on to the advanced pattern search on Ravelry and find a pattern that will allow you to use every last metre of your yarn (all the options you need are on the left hand side).

Measuring yardage is pretty straightforward. There's a bit of counting, and some very simple maths, but it's not really something that's open to debate. Yarn thickness however, is something of a dark art.

As you get more experienced you do get better at eyeballing a piece of yarn and declaring "DK weight", but sometimes it's nice to check, and of course, eyeballing requires a bit of experience. 

I'm sometimes asked if there's not a chart a spinner can use to work out yarn thickness. There may well be, but I'd not trust it any further than I could throw it. Yarn thickness is effected by so much more than just the number of metres for any given weight. 

Hand spun always tends to be denser than commercial yarn, so most of the time a  commercial yarn of around 400m/100g will be fingering weight (The term 4-ply might be more common in the UK, but isn't a great term to use as plys are the number of individual strands twisted together to make the yarn, a 4-ply can be any thickness). In handspun, if you have that much yardage per 100g you've often spun something thinner than fingering weight. Though not necessarily, it partly depends on the fibre used, and the style of spinning. Woollen yarn contains lots of air, so will have more yardage for a given weight at any thickness. Something like silk, where the fibres are tightly packed together will be much denser, so a lower yardage for a given weight at the same thickness.

This is true no matter wether you're a spinner or not. Commercial yarns succumb to exactly the same effect. 

Socks That Rocks Lightweight is definitely a fingering weight yarn, but it's tightly spun, and tightly plyed structure only give it 250m/100g.

In contrast Jamiesons & Smith Shetland Jumper Weight is a more woollen style yarn, lightly spun, lightly plyed, packed full of air. It has a whopping 456m/100g.

Yarn thickness is measured using something called WPI, which stands for Wraps Per Inch. The idea is you wrap your yarn around a gap measuring  1 inch, and count how many strands you can fit in. It works pretty well for thin yarns, if you can manage to count how many strands you've got, not always easy when there's 50+ of them packed in that gap. For thicker yarns I've always found it an impossible technique to do accurately and consistently. I don't think I'm alone either, in an elderly Spin Off I once ready an article where many people were challenged to measure the wpi of a variety of yarns, their measurements differed wildly.

By wrapping you often pull on the yarn, so it reduces in diameter, and then there's the "to-pack or not-to-pack" debate.
Picture
This is a tradition wpi gauge, wrapped tightly, and with as many strands in there as I could fit. In total there are 16 of them squashed in there.
Picture
Take a look at the same yarn, no longer under tension, and it's a very different beast. Even to look at, it doesn't look like a yarn that should measure 16wpi, and be a Sport Weight. 

Now admittedly the example above is an extreme one, but even if you relax your wrapping slightly, the act of winding the yarn in to a gap applies tension, and distorts the measurement.

For years now I've instead being comparing my yarn to a line of a known thickness. The lines are based around divisions of 1 inch, so for example a line that measures yarn of 8wpi, will be 1/8th of an inch wide. I find it gives me far more consistent results. I used to have a little bit of printed card hung on my wheel, but now I can replace it with one of these. 

Picture
Laser cut, on ether cherry veneer, or acrylic  plastic. It's got a wide set of lines on it for comparison purposes, and a reminder of how certain wpi measurements match to the names given to commercial yarns. 

To use you just overlay your yarn on top of the tool, and match it to the right thickness. 
Picture
Here's the same yarn I was measuring above. It just covers the 8wpi line, which compared to commercial yarns I've handled feels right, just on the border between a heavy Aran, and a skinny Chunky weight.

You can even attach it to your wheel and use it as a checking tool while you spin to help keep your singles a more consistent thickness. 

WPI Guages are available in the shop here.


Comments are closed.

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    More
     BlogPosts

    Categories

    All
    Advent
    Bees
    Chickens
    Countryside
    Dogs
    FO's
    KitILove
    Non Wool Club
    Rhinebeck
    Shop Talk
    Spinning
    Spinningwithapurpose
    SpoinnersAdvent
    Weaving

    RSS Feed

    follow us in feedly

Hilltop Cloud

Hilltop Cloud- Spin Different 

Beautiful fibre you'll love to work with. 
Established 2011 

VAT Reg- 209 4066 19
Dugoed Bach, Mallwyd, Machynlleth,
​ Powys, SY20 9HR
Subscribe to our 
​Email Newsletter
Join the Hilltop Cloud Mighty Network