I apologise for the long gap between this and my last post, I had a stinking cold, the builders were back and there just seemed to be so much going on. That's life I suppose!
Anyway, back to yarn substitution. In order to visualise how substituting yarn might effect the final size of a garment, I knitted 9 swatches, each with a different DK yarn. All are 20 stitches wide and 20 rows long, within a garter stitch border. All were knitted with 4 mm needles.
I included yarns from both animal and plant origins as often changing from say wool to cotton, results in the most notable changes in size. Looking at the image above you can see that even though they all look pretty similar, there are differences, some more obvious than others.
So, lets assume that I have a pattern for yarn 1. This is Drops Lima (65% wool, 35% alpaca) with a gauge of 21 st x 28 rows for a 10 x 10 cm square. My swatch of 20 st x 20 rows should measure 9.5 cm x 7.1 cm, which it does.
I will now go through each of the swatches to see how they would fare if substituted for yarn 1.
Swatch 2. Rowan Purelife (100% organic wool). My swatch measures 9 cm x 6.5 cm so this garment would knit up smaller in both width and length.
Swatch 3. Rowan Baby Alpaca (100% baby alpaca). My swatch measures 10.6 cm x 6.5 cm so this garment would be wider and shorter.
Swatch 4. Rowan Tweed (100% wool). My swatch measures 10.5 cm x 6.5 cm so this would also knit up wider and shorter.
Swatch 5. Perran Yarns Merino and Silk (75% organically farmed merino wool, 25% tussah silk). My swatch measures 9.5 cm x 6.2 cm so this garment would be the correct width but shorter.
Swatch 6. Natural Dye Studio Angel DK (70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, 10% cashmere). My swatch measures 10 cm x 7 cm so this would knit up wider and very slightly shorter.
Swatch 7. King Cole Cottonsoft (100% cotton). My swatch measures 10 cm x 7.4 cm so this garment would be wider and longer.
Swatch 8. Rowan Pima Cotton (100% cotton). My swatch measures 9.8 cm x 7.2 cm so this garment would be slightly wider and slightly longer.
Swatch 9. Rowan Summerspun (50% wool, 50% cotton). My swatch measures 9.5 cm x 6.3 cm so this garment would knit up the correct width but would be shorter.
I hope this hasn't been too confusing as I realise that most knitting books and blogs compare swatches by the number of stitches and rows. I wanted you to be able to see how the differences in yarn choice effect size.
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| These three swatches illustrate how substituting yarn can effect the size of the finished garment. They are all DK yarns but each would give you a different result. |
I'm going to use these three swatches to illustrate how a hypothetical garment would look, knitted in each yarn. Lets imagine that you are knitting a plain jumper from the bottom up which requires you to cast on 150 stitches and the length from bottom to neck is 230 rows. The yarn in the top swatch would give you a width of 76 cm and a length of 40.8 cm. The yarn in the middle swatch would give you a width of 84 cm and a length of 37.4 cm. The yarn in the bottom swatch would give you a width of 80 cm and a length of 42.6 cm. If the pattern was designed for the yarn in the top swatch, the jumper knitted in yarn from the middle swatch would be 8 cm (3 1/4 inches) wider which would make a significant difference to a garment that was fitted.
I hope this hasn't been too confusing. In my next post I will talk about what you can do to compensate for different gauge/tension. You may still be able to use that favorite yarn!
Cheerio for now.
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