What does that say?
Ok, lets talk yarn!
I think, given you’re reading this, it’s pretty safe to say that you like yarn, and have probably seen quite a few ball bands before. But have you always understood what they mean?
They are often laid out differently, although within each brand they seem to have the same layout and information. What does a ball band tell you about the yarn and how you would then work with it?
The answer is both ‘lots’ and ‘not as much as you’d think’. It’s also worth noting here that there have been several ball bands over the years that I have completely disagreed with!
So lets look at it in bits.
Care instructions.
Most (but not all!) ball bands will give you washing instructions. These are usually quite straight forward: ‘cool hand wash only’, ‘gentle machine wash at 30’ etc. But when you’re faced with an international label, it can be a little more confusing to work out.
There will usually be a note for UK/US/EU washing instructions on there that you’ll be able to understand, but not all yarns have these distinctions. It can be worth searching online for the yarn and seeing if you can translate the symbols rather than winging it. There are image searches which can be very useful for this!
This Noro care tag shows the following symbols:
Essentially Noro is saying: don't wash it at home at all — take it to a dry cleaner and make sure they use the right process. Which makes sense given Noro's beautiful but delicate natural fibres!
And yet… A very gentle warm water bathe with Soak (or another dedicated, delicate no-rinse wool wash) and no agitation works fine with Noro and almost all yarns – we’ve done this a few times, especially for blocking our Noro projects. Obviously, do this at your own risk, but in our experience, it’s felting that you’re trying to stop from happening, so a gentle bathe and then laying flat to dry is ok. Just make sure to reshape it whilst damp and not to wiggle it in the water.
A West Yorkshire Spinners tag and a Luca-S tag have other symbols:
It is always best to follow the instructions on the care tag. If you want to do your own thing, see if you can do a small test piece (such as a gauge square) first rather than just throwing your entire finished garment in and seeing what happens.
Woolbert thought that he was ok using a wool wash cycle on his machine for his latest project and ended up with a sweater that would be too small for a newborn lamb!
(Don’t be Woolbert!)
Yarn weight and meterage
You’d think that this would be accurate, wouldn’t you. Sadly not! The meterage is, as Andy would say, 'within'. There are actually laws in place that govern the ‘tolerance’ - the amount either side of the stated meterage – that a ball of yarn can be.
It's 4.5%!
This doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve got a ball of double-knit yarn that is meant to be 225m long, you might have as little as 215m. And that 10m can make all the difference when you’re arguing with Yarn Chicken at the end of a project!
The other note here is what weight the yarn is.
As I discussed in the Top Three Tips – Yarn Substitution blog post, not all yarns are created equal. This is where a lot of error comes in!
I have seen yarns that work entirely on the meterage of the yarn to decide what weight the yarn is (West Yorkshire Spinners Wensleydale Gems, I’m looking at you here!). Although this yarn has been discontinued, it is still a really good example. Because Wensleydale is a heavy fibre in comparison to others, although you might be getting 225m in 100g of fibre, that doesn’t mean that it is a DK/double knit weight yarn. This is because the yarn has to be spun more thinly than a lighter fibre in order to get the same meterage.
So if you’re going entirely by the number of meters of a skein or ball, this is not always accurate in telling you what ‘weight’ (thickness) the yarn is. And companies frequently get it wrong, so it’s worth looking at other things on the band as well to see whether they add up, and also looking at the yarn itself, and if you’re in a yarn shop, holding it next to other yarns that say they are the same weight and doing a visual comparison.
You can also be clever and take a Yarnie’s Friend or ruler with you which you can check the wraps per inch of the yarn whilst you’re there too! (again, check out the ‘Top Three Tips’ blog for how to do this and the comparison chart!)
Suggested Needle (and hook) size
This is another interesting one. Most ball bands have a suggested needle gauge but completely forget about crocheters! West Yorkshire Spinners is in the minority with this.
The suggested needle size will be based, theoretically, on the thickness of the yarn, and will be what the manufacturer thinks will give you a medium density fabric.
This has two implications. Firstly – this might not be the size of needle or hook that you actually want to use for your project, and secondly, it can be a little bit off. Especially if you are trying to convert from a ‘recommended needle size’ to a ‘recommended hook size’. It also doesn’t take into account your own knitting or crochet style!
Lets look at West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply.
Their ball band suggests a 3.25mm needle and hook. This yarn is most frequently used for socks, and so pretty much always knitted on about a 2.5mm needle. This is 3 sizes smaller than the recommended size. If you were looking at that ball band and thinking you were going to knit a pair of socks with it and didn’t know that this was it’s primary purpose, then you might think that it was going to be too thick for socks based on that recommended needle size.
As I said above, it’s the manufacturer’s guestimate based on a medium density fabric. In real life, people knit a ‘4ply’ yarn like the signature with anything from a 2mm needle to a 4mm needle, depending on the drape that they need in the fibre.
Thinking of it from a crocheter’s point of view as well, the suggested needle size is technically accurate, given that the hook and the needles are both the same diameter, but it doesn’t take into account the difference in the fabric texture. So yes you absolutely could crochet up the yarn in the same hook size as the recommended needle size, but you might end up with a denser fabric. Many crocheters that I’ve spoken to over the years tend to go up one hook size from the recommended needle size on a ball band so that their work is again a more medium tension.
Suggested Gauge
This follows on from the suggested needle/hook size quite nicely. Most yarns (again not all) will have a suggested gauge that you can use to see how compatible it is with your pattern. The gauge on the ball band will relate to knitting and to the needle size that they suggest. It is very unlikely that there will be a suggested crochet gauge.
The gauge it shows will give a number of stitches and number of rows to a 10cm/4” square. This means that if you were to knit to their suggested tension on the needles they suggest, this would be the number of stitches and rows you would get.
If your pattern shows a higher number of stitches and rows and a smaller needle size, then the yarn may be compatible. And again, if it shows fewer stitches and rows but a larger needle size, this may be fine too. It depends on how the pattern designer wants the tension of the work to be, as opposed to what the yarn manufacturer thinks the medium tension on a medium sized needle should be.
Basically this is a useful guide and can help when substituting yarns, but it should not be taken as gospel and does not always indicate whether the yarn is suitable for the project you’re wanting to make. Think of the WYS Signature being knitted for socks again. Their tension is based on 3.25mm needles, not the 2.5mm you’d be using for socks, but the yarn is perfect for them!
Fibre Content.
As with yarn meterage, you might be surprised to know that there are laws that govern the tolerance of the fibre content in your yarn.
In the UK, EU and US, this is 3%. What this means is that if we look at Rowan Felted Tweed, which says 50% wool, 25% alpaca, 25% viscose, that those amounts could be anywhere from 47-53% wool, 22-28% alpaca and 22-28% viscose. And it will vary between batches due to the blending process, which is why you may feel a slight difference between yarns that are technically the same.
The only time the 3% rule doesn’t apply, is when the yarn states that it is 100% something. If it says 100% merino, it must be that. It can’t be 3% other fibres.
Shade numbers or names and batch or lot numbers.
Again if we look at the Felted Tweed image above, you can see the shade number (sh) is 029 and the lot number is 69730.
Most yarn companies give their colourways a number and a name, but most only print the number on the ball band. This is a pain for those of us who remember names better than numbers, as it means that we’re constantly having to look it up!
This number or name will never change though. It’s how you know that particular colourway is what it will be. There will only ever be one colourway 29 of Rowan Felted Tweed Colour. The lot or batch number however….
What the lot or batch means is that ‘these yarns were dyed together at the same time’.
With hand dyed yarns (mine included) the batches are often quite small, sometimes only 4 or 5 skeins at a time. With commercial companies you will find that they number in their hundreds or even thousands! The important thing when doing a large project is to make sure that this batch number is the same for all of your different balls of yarn.
The problem with recreating a colour is that nomatter how hard you try, how carefully the dye is measured, the fibre prepared and the processes followed, there can be variations. As such, you need to make sure that you have all the same ‘dye lot’ if you’re going to be making a project requiring more than one ball of yarn. Otherwise you can end up with quite a significant change in the colour when you change yarns, resulting in one sleeve that doesn’t quite match, for example.
So please make sure when you’re buying that the dye lots match up if you can!
Hopefully that’s helped you understand a little more about the yarn you’re using and how to get the best out of it. Next time you’re in a shop looking at a yarn band, you’ll have a bit more of an idea of what it means and feel more confident to purchase. And remember, you're always welcome to ask for some support if there's something on there that you don't understand or need clarity on!