Intro to Yarn

Before we can start knitting, let’s take a trip to your local yarn store (LYS). Visit Ravelry’s yarn shop search engine or Google yarn stores in your area. If chain craft stores or shopping online are your only options, don’t worry – I’ll also give you links to options that will work great for your projects. Let’s talk about some basics now so that when you go into your yarn store, you’ll know what to look for and what to ask about.

Yarn Fibers

Yarns are made out of different kinds of fibers spun together in different thicknesses.

Natural fibers can come from animal hair: that of sheep (called wool of course), goat (hello, cashmere!), llama, alpaca, and angora rabbit are the most common. They can be plant- or animal-product based: silk (from silkworms), cotton, and even corn, soy, and bamboo.

They can also be synthetic: made from petroleum or man-made substances, giving us acrylic, polyester, and nylon. Just like wine grapes, different fibers have different properties – in the case of yarn, they have different durability, drape, texture, and so on. Blended together, the fibers share properties and result in something that can be greater than the sum of their parts. You’ll find natural fibers in their pure form as well as mixed with other fibers in your LYS.

At large craft chain stores, you’ll find the more inexpensive synthetic blends (acrylic), perhaps mixed with a percentage of wool. The most common fibers you’ll come across are wool and acrylic, and they are pretty much doppelgangers, although sometimes they play nicely together. Wool is natural, supports sheep farmers, bounces, takes dye beautifully, smells good, and feels good to knit. It is also more expensive.

Acrylic is uniform, made in a lab from synthetic materials, is soft yet lacks character, dyes evenly, and is less expensive. Just keep this information in mind – it as well as your own experiences moving forward will help you make better-informed decisions at the yarn store.

Yarn Thicknesses

Yarns come in a wide variety of thicknesses. For the projects in this e-book, we’ll be sticking in the middle range of what’s available – this will mean that your projects won’t take too long, but they will also be subtle and wearable in all weathers, that is, not overly chunky.

Selecting a Yarn For Your First Project

For your first project, we’ll be shopping mainly for a soft wool or wool-blend yarn that is fairly bulky, to make a simple but elegant ribbed scarf.

Your yarn store may be organized by yarn weights, or thicknesses, which will be helpful, but either way, please ask an employee to help you find a soft, bulky- or aran-weight yarn (definitions coming up) with enough yardage to make a scarf.

Soft fibers that you may want to try are alpaca, merino wool, or more economically, a merino-acrylic blend. It’s up to you to decide what you feel comfortable purchasing, but as I give you a few choices let me encourage you to select something you’re really going to enjoy feeling in your fingers as you knit.

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[column width=”30%” padding=”5%”] [/column][column width=”55%” padding=”0%”]Berroco Comfort Chunky is an inexpensive synthetic yarn in the bulky thickness. It has an even color throughout and is quite soft. It runs $6.50 for 150 yards (100 g). Note: The words “bulky” and “chunky” are used interchangeably in knitting terminology.[/column][end_columns]

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[column width=”30%” padding=”5%”][/column][column width=”55%” padding=”0%”]At the other end of the scale, Misti Alpaca Hand Paint Chunky is a 100% alpaca yarn that is hand-dyed, costs a fortune, and feels like it, too. For 108 yards (100 g) it runs $15.20 for the solid colors and $23.00 for the hand-painted colors. This is what I’ll be using for the video demonstrations, so you’ll get to see how it looks in action even if you don’t buy it.[/column][end_columns]

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[column width=”30%” padding=”5%”][/column][column width=”55%” padding=”0%”]In between is a great yarn called Malabrigo Chunky which is a 100% merino wool yarn that is kettle-dyed for subtle color depth. It runs $11.60 for 104 yards (100 g).[/column][end_columns]

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If you’re lucky, your local yarn store will have all these choices and everything in between. Just set your budget and ask for enough yarn to make a scarf (usually 3 skeins* or balls).

Your first scarf calls for either bulky OR aran-weight yarn – depending on how bulky you like your scarf (and how fast you want the project to go – the thicker the yarn, the faster it goes).

Aran-weight yarn is just one step thinner than bulky. I give you directions for either thickness of yarn.

*Some Yarn Terminology

Yarn is sold in different forms – it can be wound into a ball (called a skein), or twisted into a pretzel (called a hank).

However, be forewarned – at your yarn store your are more likely to hear balls called balls, and anything else called skeins.

Also, any hank of yarn needs to be wound into a ball before you can use it. Just ask the employees at your yarn store or wind it by hand at home (a slower option).

Yarn Labels

In the US, companies are required to list the fiber content of the yarns by percentage. They also usually categorize the thickness of the yarn with names and numbers.

This isn’t a perfect system by any means, and there are other ways to be sure about what thickness of yarn you have, which we’ll go over later in this course.

For now, you can ask your LYS employee to help you with the thicknesses.

My recommendation for our first project would be three skeins of Malabrigo Chunky or Malabrigo Twist (an aran-weight option), but, keep in mind, I have your knitting pleasure and the look of the finished product more in mind than your pocketbook – you’ll have to make the price decision yourself.

A Note About Color

Since we will be mainly working with and learning about texture in this course, you’ll want to chose a yarn in a color that will show off the textures that you are knitting, and also make it easy for you to see what you’re doing.

Just remember that the more color-changes that there are in a yarn, the more difficult it will be to see the texture pattern. Kettle-dyed yarns are great – they have a solid color base, but the lightness and darkness of the color varies throughout the skein.

Solid-color yarns with flecks of color, as well as heathered or tweed yarns, also work nicely for patterned stitches and scarves. Here’s a video I filmed in Santiago, Chile that will help you choose the kind of yarn you want to look for.

Intro to Needles

You’ll also want to pick up a pair of US size 9 (5.25 mm) or 10 ½ (6.5 mm) knitting needles, preferably bamboo or birch wood (as opposed to plastic – your stitches will stay on your needles easier, and it’ll be a more pleasant experience overall).

Buy a pair of 9s if you’re knitting with aran-weight yarn, and 10 ½s if you’re knitting with chunky yarn.

Other Notions to Buy

While you’re at the yarn store, pick up a gauge checker (or you can use a simple ruler or tape measure) and a pair of small, sharp scissors you can put in your knitting bag.

You may also want to select a good-quality blunt metal tapestry needle (as opposed to the blue plastic ones you may have bought before).

If you’ve purchased yarn that comes in a skein (a ball of yarn that is pre-wound), you’ll want to find the end of the yarn that’s tucked in the middle of the ball, so that you can pull it straight out from the center and prevent a rolling-all-around-the-floor-cat-bait scenario.

If the employees wind your yarn for you at the yarn store, they should hand it to you with the end that comes from the middle sticking out and the outside strand tucked nicely out of the way. Again, just pull from the middle.