A Visual Guide to WPI

I recently discovered this item while reading a Knitty blog post:

It's basically a quick visual reference to check yarn WPI while spinning to ensure your getting the weight you want.  However, I noticed a lot of comments here and there that its a good quick check when determining yarn weight of an unknown yarn rather than actually wrapping and counting. Since I thrift a lot of yarn and a lot of it has no label, this would speed up my identification process. 

As a cheap, quick visual reference card, I just wanted a printable version.  I found one (that's it...only one) that I could print but try as I might, I could not get it to scale.   I then decided to make one myself using Excel, and it turned out great.  I printed it at actual size and it matches up perfectly to sizing.  I added a few things for easy reference based on Ravelry's Standard Weights  and voila...a super handy reference which can be printed and laminated.

Click here to download the Printable PDF

Web Stumblings - YarnSub.com

As a thrifter and "random yarn" buyer, I rarely have the yarn suggested in a pattern. Often, the suggested yarn is something a bit beyond my payscale or specific to the designers region (i.e. a common UK yarn may not be a common Canada yarn), or I may just not want to spend any more cash on yarn when I already have a room full.  I have searched for advice online for substituting yarn (this blogpost from Tumped Duck was very handy) but there are not a lot of resources that I found which actually show you how yarns compare.  Ravelry has its database of yarn in which you can manually search for a yarn with similar parameters.  You select the parameters, search through each yarn and compare. This is very useful but can be time consuming.

Then I found this site:

Basically, you plug in your yarn name, and they generate a list of yarns which are comparable based on yarn weight or category, texture, fiber content, recommended needle size, gauge, ball weight, yardage/meterage, and care instructions.  Crazy right?

Check this out.  I entered Loops & Threads Charisma.

And....drumroll....

Is that not awesome?  This is just a sample; there were 22 on the list, each with a description of how it matched.  You can search for comparable yarns that have certain parameters, such as an acrylic free version of Charisma.  For more how-to on that process, see this article.  Try it out; you won't be sorry.

Happy subbing :)