In my previous post, I mentioned I would prefer a finer yarn for the garment I intend to make for myself. My original idea for this garment was for a season changing topper, so I wanted a slightly denser than normal fabric. I have knit, washed, and measured the sample and run the numbers. Here they are, for your reading pleasure.
This is a 2 ply yarn, spun and plied on my Ashford Elizabeth wheel. The fiber contents are: 85% wool and 15% mohair. Primarily hand dyed yarn, though I have no dye information on the New Zealand gift wool. The fiber was prepared into rolags via hand cards and spun into fine singles, plied and washed to set the twist.
The yarn weighed in at 18 wraps per inch, 1400 yards per pound, which is a sport weight yarn. According to the Twisted Sisters, a sport weight yarn knit on size 4-6 US needles will yield 5/6 stitches per inch. I got 4.5 stitches per inch, knitting back and forth, left and right handed, as is my preferred style for non-circular knitting. As mentioned previously, for me, this method eliminates the wide tension variance between my knit stitch and purl stitches.
Hoping for a denser fabric, I chose to knit with size 4 US needles and 0.4 ounces of the fine Thistle Yarn. Cast on 23 stitches and knit k1, p1 ribbing for 1 1/4 inches, then worked in stockinette stitch until the yarn was used up. It took 1.5 hours to knit the sample. The sample size was 5 1/2 inches by 9 1/4" I got 4.5 stitches per inch.
I consulted Ann Budd's Handy Guide to Yarn Requirements, which I've modified by adding the Twisted Sisters table of hand spun yarns and their gauge and weight equivalents.
For a vest in the size I want and for my gauge, I will need 845 yards/9.6 ounces of this yarn. It will take me 24 hours to spin and 20 hours to knit, for a total of 44 hours to complete the project.
For a basic sweater, I would need 1670 yards/19.1 ounces of yarn. It will take 48 hours to spin and 61 hours to knit, for a total of 109 hours. If you check the last post, I hypothesized that roughly the same numbers for my sweater as Bills Mystery Yarn vest.
Given that I already have a 109 hour project, already spun nearly 600 yards of this yarn, there other projects in the queue, and I can always use another partial layer, I'm going to knit the pullover vest version.
One blog comment was about my methodical information. I began blogging to record the completion of projects, but over time it has become an invaluable resource for pricing the products in my shop; determining which projects I can reasonably take on; a tool to demonstrate how much time goes into these handmade works; and, hopefully, helpful to my fellows spinners.
My last thoughts on this project are that I found I had enough yarn to work an alternate stitch in this swatch. I have a preference for knitting certain stitches, but sometimes it's nice to mix it up a bit and learn a new stitch. You don't really know how it will look until you work the stitch with that particular yarn. For future projects, I will purchase an additional 20% fiber in order to spin and knit enough yarn for a larger sample and multiple stitch patterns, a minimum of a half an ounce, but an ounce would be a good safe amount.
I'll add a photo of the sample to this post in the next couple of days.
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