When I was setting up Yarn Me Calm and the website I was super excited, making contact with manufacturers, determining what yarn we would initially stock, thinking about all the amazing squishiness that would soon be mine............I mean available in the store, and contemplating all the things I would share in the Calming Yarn.
I wanted to make the site as user friendly as possible. In order to do this I needed to come up with a standard way of presenting the yarn and I quickly decided on: description, fibre, size, weight, recommended needles/hook and squishy rating. This should have been a fairly easy thing to do.......
So.........I started looking at the different yarn categories, classifications and conversions and my head very quickly started to spin, not in a exorcist sort of way, but in total and utter confusion!
I found myself looking at all sorts of conversion charts, some making sense, some not and some just contradictory. I looked at what are termed 'standard' yarn weights which are great but are not universal. Does everyone else get as confused between UK, US and Australian yarn weight descriptors and conversions?
There are some amazing sites that I found that were extremely useful particularly with some of the yarns that I was planning on selling as they didn't have clearly defined information about what category they were. I found that Ravelry was helpful with this.
What I ended up doing was using a combination of some of the various charts and descriptions available to create an average. This was the best way I could make sense of it all, particularly given we have yarns from all over the world!
Hopefully this is as helpful to you as it is to me!
| UK | US | AUS | Hook/Needle |
| 1 Ply |
Lace-weight
|
2 Ply |
1.5 - 2.25 mm |
| 2 - 3 Ply |
Fingering/Sock
|
3 Ply |
2.25 - 3.5 mm |
| 4 Ply |
Sport
|
5 Ply |
3.0 - 4.5 mm |
| DK |
DK/Light Worsted
|
8 Ply |
4.0 -5.5 mm |
| Aran |
Worsted
|
10 Ply |
5.0 - 6.5 mm |
| Chunky |
Bulky
|
12 Ply |
6.0 - 9 mm |
| Super Chunky |
Super Bulky
|
14 Ply |
9 mm - 15 mm |
| Jumbo -Gigante |
Jumbo
|
15 mm + |
4 comments
Love this Andrea – thank you. I am always confused when reading about the weights of yarn. I pretty much know 4,8 and 10 ply or DK 🤣
This will be very useful in the future for me !
Thank you Andrea. Like so many of us I too was a bit confused with different size yarns from different countries. I did work out though that a #4 US weight is fantastic for shawls 🤗 Loving the site btw 🌹
Thank you! I get so confused with trying to figure out what yarn to use because of this. I will print this & have it where I can refer to it.
Thank you, thank you and thank you again for this chart. I’m of the vintage when yarn was identified by its ply. When I first saw all these different classifications I too ended up with a head spin. This chart is going to be a valuable tool when deciding on yarns for my projects.
Maggie.