Knitting with Handspun Yarns

There are two basic approaches to knitting your handspun, either you have the plan or pattern and you spin the yarn to match, or you have the yarn and you want a pattern, or at least a recipe. You can knit with any yarn you can weave with, but in general you probably will want to spin yarns for knitting that are softer than those you spin for weaving. Strength is not a problem for knitting yarns - they won't be under much tension. In fact, you can knit with barely spun pencil roving or with unspun silk.

Spinning to a pre-determined gauge
Here are three very handy pattern books intended for use by spinners: Homespun Handknits, Sweaters by Hand, and The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook.
Along with the pattern, these books give you the fiber content of the original and the wraps per inch it was spun to. Your goal then is to spin to that wpi, whether or not you use the same fibers. If you spin the same or similar fibers to the same wraps per inch and the same yardage listed you will certainly be able to make the garment. When choosing fibers for your own version, consider the character of the original fiber or blend, and whether your fiber or blend will be similar, or not, and whether you care about that. And how do you match their original? Samples. So then you work with samples of your fiber until you can match the wraps per inch. Once you have achieved a satisfactory sample, tape a piece of the singles to the wheel, so you can keep an eye on whether you are maintaining that wpi or not. Stop occasionally to check your wpi, just to be sure.

You can use a commercial pattern if you can figure out the gauge and the feel of the yarn the pattern was originally designed for. If you can see a sample of the yarn, that would be a help. Otherwise, you can figure the probable wraps per inch from the gauge given, and other characteristics, whether it is hard spun or soft spun or whatever, from the pattern picture or the type of garment it is.

You can copy a finished sweater or other garment by looking at it and working out what the pattern was, but you have to be pretty experienced with patterns to do that. Of course, you don't have to figure out exactly what the pattern was, only some technique that would produce the result you're looking for.

How much fiber are you going to have to spin? There is little wastage in spinning but some in knitting. A good amount to spin over and above what you need is about 10% to allow for the wastage inherent in knitting.

The second basic approach to spinning starts in a more happy go lucky fashion - you have made the yarn, spinning it however felt right, or possibly spinning it to learn a particular technique and now you want to knit it.

You need to work out these three factors:
  1. What is the proper gauge of your yarn?
  2. How much yarn do you have?
  3. How much yarn do you need?
The best way to determine the natural gauge of your yarn is to knit a swatch of it. In spite of what some knitters say, with most yarns you can too knit a swatch, tear it out, and re-use it, so don't be afraid you will use up all your yarn swatching. If the yarn you are reusing is too fragile to stand one pull out and rewashing, you have very fragile yarn indeed. If it's kinky after pulling it out, wet it and let it hang to dry.

Starting a swatch. A good rule of thumb is to double the yarn and twist it lightly - like a loose plying job, then either hold it against the proposed needle or push it through the proposed hole in the needle gauge. The doubled yarn thickness should be about equal to the thickness of the needle. Of course, for special effects you could knit it tighter or looser. So now it's play time. Try the yarn with the "average knitting" needle. Try it with stockinette, garter, or seed stitch, try it a size smaller or a size larger, try it two or three sizes smaller or larger. Fool with it until you find a gauge you like with this yarn. It's human nature that most spinners tend to settle on a type of yarn they like best, so after a time, you won't be trying a dozen different ways to knit your handspun, unless you're just doing it for fun, or because you feel you're in a rut. Make a good sized gauge piece in the pattern you have selected for your garment.

This gives you a gauge, but how do you find or figure out a pattern?
You can turn to Homespun, Handknits, Sweaters by Hand, The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, or other similar patterns. Or you can learn to design your own. There are also patterns, such as my own hat patterns, and the famous Circumnavigated Cardigan, and the Odd Ball Sweater, and the Sweatshirt Sweater, which are designed without a specific gauge. Instead you work out the gauge when it becomes important. Most of these patterns work from the center out, or from the top down. Some of them aren't patterns so much, perhaps, as recipes. What I call recipes are descriptions of how to knit something that don't go so far as to specify gauge and numbers of stitches. They give you formulas perhaps, and construction techniques. One really great system, well worth learning for the handspinner, is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Percentage System, as put forth in a number of locations, including Knitting Without Tears, her own book, and in The Sweater Workbook by Jacqueline Fee. Unlike the ones I mentioned first, Elizabeth's system assumes you are starting at the bottom edge. It is seamless, knit on circular needles and double points, thus saving lots of yarn, and therefore time.

Old time knitters didn't have exact patterns. They had systems, customs, habits. Of course, they also tended to knit the same type of article over and over again, using the same type of locally available yarn. We have the opportunity to try out lots of different things.

Zimmerman's Percentage System, Knitting in the Old Way, The Sweater Workshop, Knitting from the Top, and numerous other books that focus on technique - all are recipes you can readily use for handspun and make your own pattern. Of course we also have computer programs available now to do the math for you. I don't use computer programs myself. What I do is have a standard format for a pattern and fill in the blanks. A calculator takes care of the math. It doesn't have to be hard.

It's a good idea to identify for yourself what is really fun for you about knitting. Do you go nuts for unusual structure? Is color your thing? Texture? Lace? Then concentrate on that aspect of it, and choose easy solutions for what you don't like. Hate math, not interested in weird structure? - get a computer program. Love the math, love color, don't care about structure - try Elizabeth's Percentage System, or Knitting in the Old Way, or 25 Sweaters for the Beginning Knitter - (even if you're not a beginning knitter) or make standard patterns for yourself then play with color and texture. Consider your garments as canvasses. You are making wearable art. You are doing it to enjoy yourself, not to suffer.

You will note that I don't have a lot to say about spinning worsted or woolen, spinning two ply or three ply - all of those are decisions to be made by the spinner/knitter. Make the yarn that's suitable to the garment you want, or choose or make a pattern that's suitable to the yarn you have spun.

Wraps per inch, what they mean, and how to do them. Wraps per inch was first popularized by Mabel Ross in Essentials of Handspinning. Mabel Ross took a very exacting approach to spinning, and had very specific rules governing nearly everything. This is a great way to get repeatable results, if you want repeatable results. If that's not of major importance to you, don't worry about it.

Figuring wraps per inch
You can use anything you want that has a inch measurement on it: ruler, yarn gauge, dowel stick with one inch marked on it, handcarved ebony combination nostepinde and inch marker - whatever. The idea is to wrap the yarn so the wraps lie side by side, smoothly, neither crowded nor see-through, and count how many widths of the yarn it takes to make an inch. Of course this isn't a rigidly exact measure, but it does give you a close estimate.

The Hundred Yard Rule
Check out Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Knitting in the Old Way for her "100 yard Rule": Basically, WPI of your yarn times 100, equals the yardage needed to knit a size 36" stockinette stitch "standard" fitting long sleeved sweater. Add or subtract 10% for each size above or below the 36. Add 20% for cables. Guesstimate color work by % and divide for each color by it's percentage of the garment.

Your second problem is to figure out how much yarn you need for a pattern.
The 100 yard rule gives you a rough estimate. Here are some more rough estimates from my own experience: 150 to 200 yds for a hat, 200 to 300 for a long scarf, 1000 to 1500 for a lace shawl. 1000 or so for a plain shawl.

A more accurate method of working out how much you need for a particular garment is to work from a diagram of the pattern. From this diagram calculate the area of the garment. For those who are a long time out of school, you calculate the area of an irregular shape by dividing it into regular shapes. For a square or rectangle the formula is one side in inches multiplied by the other side in inches. For a right angle triangle, multiply one half the bottom in inches by the straight side in inches. For triangles that aren't right angle, make them into however many right angle triangles it takes. Carry the numbers out to two places or so - your calculator will do that happily for you. Add all those areas up and that is the total area of the garment in inches. Scary isn't it?

Now you know how many square inches you need.

Now how many yards per inch? Or inches per yard?
Now you go back to your final swatch - the one that has the gauge and pattern stitch you intend to use for this garment. Carefully measure the total area of the swatch, pinning it flat if needed. Mark on the yarn, with a pin or a knot, where the swatch begins, and gently pull it out, having of course written down all the specifics of gauge to two places, and needle size (no you won't remember - write it down). When you have pulled out the swatch, measure the yardage of the yarn used. Now you know that it took, say 25 yards to make a 4 x 4.5 inch swatch. Now you figure the area of the swatch. 4 x 4.5 is 18 square inches. So you know that it takes 25 yards exactly for 18 square inches. How many yards does it take for 253 square inches?

Proportions: You'll remember this after a while. Set it up like a pair of fractions. Yards we want to know over area of the whole thing, is equal to 25 yards over 18 square inches. Remember good old cross-multiply and divide?

Now you know your gauge and how much yarn you need. How much yarn do you have?
Measuring options: Or you can calculate yardage by weight in the following steps:
  1. determine yards per pound
  2. determine weight of yarn you have
  3. calculate yardage using proportions

How to use a McMorran Yarn Balance to calculate yards per pound.
  1. Put the McMorran balance on the edge of a table or shelf.
  2. Put the balancing arm into it's little notches and check that it moves freely.
  3. Lay a length of yarn in the notch on the balance arm, allowing the yarn to hang down loosely, not touching anything.
  4. Using scissors, trim a bit of yarn, cutting maybe 1/2 inch at a time or less, until the balancing arm sits level.
  5. When the arm sits level, remove the length of yarn from the balance.
  6. Measure the length of yarn.
  7. Multiply the measurement in inches x 100. For example: 8 in x 100 = 800.
This measurement gives you the number of yards per lb. of yarn, the famous (ypp).

If you'd rather use centimeters and grams you need to buy a scale especially balanced for that purpose.

Hint: If you are measuring a very irregular yarn, try to find a representative example or do two or three measurements and average them.

Okay, so now you know how many yards per pound the yarn is, so how many pounds (or more likely, ounces) do you have?
Now weigh your total amount of yarn:
Options:
Postal scale, food scale, gram scale. I find the local post office, which kindly put a scale out in the lobby so customers wouldn't bother the clerk inside, to be very useful. The first number the scale gives is the actual weight and the second number is it's postage price, if you care.

You can also weigh it on a gram scale, but then you have to convert to ounces.
Conversion: 28.4 grams per ounce = 454 grams per pound.

Say you have 20 ounces of yarn at 900 ypp. So how many yards do you have?
Convert ounces to pounds or pounds to ounces. Divide your ypp by 16 to get yards per ounce. Multiply yards per ounce by ounces and there you are.



Formula for working out what your gauge is:
number of stitches in swatch, divided by inches of width = stitches per inch

Formula for how many stitches you need for a given width:
stitches per inch times number of inches across = number of stitches across

Row gauge is how many rows per inch. A single stockinette stitch is rectangular, not square. The ration of width to height is about 4 to 3 so a general rule in stockinette is that the number of rows per inch will be in the same ratio. So 6 stitches per inch in stockinette should be about 8 rows per inch. This does not apply to other pattern stitches. Garter stitch notoriously stretches wider and shrinks height, and it just so happens that the ratio in garter stitch is 1 to 2. So it takes twice as many rows per inch as stitches per inch. That's why you have to work out gauge in the actual pattern stitch you will use.

Rule of thumb for picking a needle: Double the yarn and twist it lightly together. Choose a needle the same size to start working swatches on. If you find that you consistently need to go up or down a needle size, change this rule accordingly.

Relationship between wraps per inch, stitches per inch, yarn category
Note: Needle sizes given are for the "average knitter". Stitches per inch is the more important number, whatever needle size it takes you to get there.

18 or more wpi, approximately equivalent to lace weight, knits at 8 or more st/in, use needles size 00 to 2
16 wpi, fingering or baby weight, or maybe socks, knits at 6-8 sts/in, needles size 2 -4
14 wpi, sport weight, sport, knits at 5-6 sts/in, needle size 4-6
12 wpi, equivalent to worsted wt knitting yarn (remember that worsted in this instance is not talking about how the yarn was spun, but about its approximate thickness.), 4 1/2 to 5 sts/in, needle size 7-9
10 wpi, equivalent to bulky or chunky yarn, 3 1/2 to 4 sts/in, needle size 10 - 11
8 or less wpi, very bulky, 2-3 sts/in, needles size 13 -16


Math:
Area of a square or rectangle = side A times Side B
Area of a right triangle = 1/2 Base times height.
Calculating a proportion - first set it up like a pair of fractions:

Now cross-multiply, and divide by the third known factor and that will give you the unknown factor.
Bibliography - I didn't include dates on these. Knitting books go in and out of print pretty fast, so any edition you find is great.

Knitting patterns for spinners:
Homespun, Handknit, ed. by LInda Ligon, Interweave Press
Sweaters by Hand, Helene Rush and Rachael Emmons, Interweave Press
The Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, Lynne Vogel, Interweave Press

More spinning than knitting but some patterns:
Angora, a Handbook for Spinners, Erica Lynne, Interweave Press
Spinning for Softness and Speed, Paula Simmons, Graphicom, Inc. Berea, Kentucky.
Merino - Handspinning, Dyeing and Working with Merino and Superfine Wools, Margaret Stove, Interweave Press
Creating Original Hand-knitted Lace, Margaret Stove, Lacis Publications

Designing your own
Knitting Without Tears, Elizabeth Zimmermann, Scribner's, but get this and other Zimmermann books and videos from Schoolhouse Press, which keeps them in print and available. http://www.schoolhousepress.com

The Sweater Workshop, Jacqueline Fee, Interweave Press,
This is an elaboration of Elizabeth Zimmermann's system, worked out in a fill in the blanks manner, for designing your own, bottom up, seamless, raglans

Knitting in the Old Way, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Interweave Press
Spinning and knitting, structure and formulas for classical sweater styles.

Knitting from the Top, Barbara Walker, Scribner's. I believe this is recently back in print. Try Schoolhouse Press for this one.

25 Gorgeous Sweaters for the Brand-New Knitter, Catherine Ham, Lark Books
This pattern book is intended for commercial yarns, but is included because it has simple elegant structures that lend themselves well to handspun yarns, and very clear diagrams of the pieces.

The Great Gaugeless Multiple Choice Tam Pattern, Carol Wyche, Firewheel Designs,
available from the designer - http://www.io.com/~cjwyche/