Yarn Standards for Spinners: Why You Should Define Your Yarn

It’s helpful to have a working knowledge of yarn standards. Even among seasoned knitters, debates rage over the difference between DK and sportweight yarn. Are they the same thing? And why would you ever try to put a label on your unique handspun?

Tangled Meanings

It’s much easier to figure out a starting point for a project when you have information like yardage, weight, and a recommended needle size, hook size, or sett. Yarn purchased from a yarn store often carries some or all of this information on the label.

Handspun yarn is unique: there’s no ball band with yardage or recommended gauge. There’s rarely a pattern written for that exact handspun. As spinners, we must act as detectives to discover our yarn’s measurements.

As tempting as it is to measure right off your wheel or spindle, be sure to measure your yarn after wet-finishing to get the most accurate yardage. Depending on your fibers and wet-finishing method, your yarn may puff up significantly, altering its thickness and length. Measuring after wet-finishing could mean the difference between a long-sleeved sweater and a vest!

One of the simplest and most accurate ways to measure handspun yarn is with a yarn balance. You can also use a wraps per inch tool for a quick estimate. These measurements are helpful for record-keeping, but they still don’t give you a great way to search for a pattern that matches your yarn.

A yarn balance and wraps per inch tool help you measure and describe your yarn weight. Photo at left by Anne Merrow; at right by Matt Graves

Charting Your Way

Fortunately, the Craft Yarn Council has worked with fiber, needle, and hook manufacturers and publishers to set up a series of guidelines and symbols to bring uniformity to patterns and to yarn, needle, and hook labeling.

Spin Off’s goal is to extend these standards to spinners to create a system for referencing the yarn we make. We have augmented the Craft Yarn Council standards by adding useful gauges for spinners, such as wraps per inch and yards per pound. We have also added recommended setts for weaving. Download your free copy below.

Our additions come from a variety of sources, from experience, and from patterns. This chart offers only rough guidelines, as a lot of variation is created by what fiber is used and how it is spun.

Still, it’s a great resource for finding words to describe your finished yarn, whether online or in print. It’s also immeasurably helpful in assisting your search for patterns to use your handspun!