For what it's worth, I did a little research on different 'laceweight' yarns. Interestingly, the term true laceweight doesn't seem to have a standard. When I googled the term, I got tons of hits, especially from spinners talking about spinning a 'true laceweight'. There didn't seem to be a consistent or standard ratio of length to weight.
The Yarn Standards weight table doesn't even give a standard for laceweight. The table stops at 'light' which is described as sock, fingering or baby weight.
The Wooly Wonka laceweight, at 1,200 yards and 6 ounces, weighs in at 200 yards per ounce. The Blue Moon Fiber Arts' Laci, the one I'm using for the Bee Fields, comes in an 8 oz. skein and has approximately 1,750 yards, or about 219 yards per ounce. Not a huge difference, but significant if you're running short and are approaching the end of your knitting!
Jaggerspun Zephyr Wool-Silk laceweight has 315 yards per ounce as does Superfine Merino. Suri Alpaca has a whopping 496 yards per ounce.
Correction to post: Anne's Wing 'o the Moth shawl was knitted using K1C2 Douceur et Soie which, like Rowan's Kidsilk Haze, has about 260 yards per ounce (227 meters/25 grams is the put-up for Kidsilk Haze). Thanks to eagle-eyed Mary for noticing my mistake!
It becomes pretty obvious that there's a lot of wiggle room when you call a yarn 'laceweight'. Now, I don't think anyone is going to want to knit a design like Bee Fields with a worsted weight wool, but it seems to me that if you have enough yardage (not weight) of a lighter weight yarn that you like, well then, knit on! :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I think you might be talking about yards per gram for Kidsilk Haze, not yards per ounce. My labels show 229 yards in a 25 gram ball, which is a little under and one ounce I believe. Though the math is beyond me to figure out the actual yards per ounce!
I thought I'd do an inventory of my shawl patterns and the yardage requirements so that I could more easily try and use stash yarn. But the differences you talk about stumped me and it never got off the ground.
Thanks, Annmarie. I had been considering "true lace weight" to be something like 400 yards for 50g, but after looking at the range of yarns in Victorian Lace Today, I began to realize that most of my thin stash yarns I had fit their "2" category. It really does seems quite arbitrary, for the most part. I guess the tried and true "swatching on different needles" is reallly the only way I'll be able to tell what works and what doesn't. But I do appreciate the yardage on the Wooly Wonka yarn.
Mary, of course you're right! I've amended my post to note that Kidsilk Haze yields about 260 yards per ounce. Thanks for pointing out this! :)
Ah, yes, but my crackerjack math had me guessing that the answer was going to turn out to be 310 yards and you had just dropped the 3 by mistake!
part of the problem with trying to make a standard of weight-to-length is that different fibers weigh different amounts. alpaca is heavier than wool and will make a much finer yarn from the same weight-to-length ratio. silk is different again...and cotton... and blends... etc. too many variables.
spinners don't gauge their yarns by weight-to-length. they gauge it by wraps per inch. if you took a dowel (or even just your ruler) and wrapped the yarn around it so that the yarn was laid side by side each time around... but wasn't smashed up against each other... and measured how many times around it took to cover 1" of the dowel, then you would have the wraps per inch. this is a more acurate gauge of the yarn, since it measures the actual thickness of the yarn, not the weight-to-length.
however... wraps per inch is also something that is variable like tension, so the numbers can change by the person. Zephyr is generally agreed to be about 30 wpi.
the term "true laceweight" refers not to a specific size... but to the fact that it falls into the range of what is commercially sold as a laceweight. there are general thickness categories that commercial yarns are sold in. since spinners can spin any thickness of yarn, they can often end up with something that falls in between the ranges of commercial sizes. they can end up with something that is half way between lace weight and fingering, for example.. and they might refer to that as a heavy laceweight. or a really fine fingering.
any of that helpful?
Jen
Of course it's helpful, Jen! The more information people have about their choices in selecting a yarn to knit any project, the better off they are.
Thanks for sharing your expertise! :)
Post a Comment