How to Read a Yarn Label Tutorial

First thing to remember about yarn labels is that they're not all created equally, especially in regards to crochet. More commercial yarn companies now put crochet information on their labels, but lots of independent yarn companies are still reluctant to add this information. I couldn't give you the reasoning, but I can help you work around it, so you can still choose any yarn to make any project with. We'll first look at a yarn label that is very crochet friendly. This label has everything we need to know to choose this yarn for our project. It gives us the content of the yarn. It gives you the weight in ounces and grams, and length in yards and meters. Below the basic info it tells you it's a medium weight yarn, which is rated as a 4 on a scale of 1-6 in yarn weight. I'll stop here before explaining the knit and crochet related information to explain how you can use the basic info to substitute yarn for different projects. Most patterns will give you the type of yarn used, as in the content, the weight of the yarn, and either how many skeins or yardage for the project. By choosing a yarn of the same type, weight, and yardage, you can assume that it will work work for your intended project. Just make sure that if you don't know how much yardage you need, and the pattern only tells you how many skeins to buy, that you look up the yardage information for the original yarn and buy the same amount of yardage in your substitute yarn. This is extremely important because just buying the same amount of skeins might give you too much yarn or too little, since all yarn companies package their yarn in different amounts, even if they're the same weight. Next we look at the crochet and knit information. Most labels will always have the size knitting needles that will work best for this type of yarn. If we are lucky, it will also have the size crochet hook. As you can see on this label, it gives us the hook size J10 or 6mm. This label even goes so far as to give us swatch information. It tells us that a 4x4 swatch should be 12 inches wide by 15 rows high. For more information on what a swatch is and why it's important, see my swatches video. Now that you've seen a crochet-friendly label, let's move on to others you might see and how to interpret them for your use. This next label is one step down from the last label. It has all of the previous information, but doesn't give us swatch information. Since this label is for a self-striping yarn, this information would be nice to have, but instead we would have to experiment to find a good stripe pattern. For more information on self-striping yarns and why a swatch is important, see my swatches video. This next example has all the knit information, but no crochet hook suggestions. The safest thing to do when choosing a hook to work with this yarn is to pick the same size hook as knitting needle recommended. All knitting needles are listed by a number size. This label tells us we need size 11 needles. As a simple stitch gauge or a quick internet search will tell us, size 11 needles are 8 millimeter in size. This means we will choose a size 8 millimeter hook, which happens to be a US size L hook. It takes a little extra work to find the correct hook size, but it is doable. If you're in the yarn store and need to know this conversion, just find the swatch gauges and use it to make your conversion. If you haven't purchased one yet, keep the gauge in your basket and buy it. It is an invaluable tool you will need for swatching and you will use it again and again. This last yarn label shows us another problem you may run into. It gives us the content, yardage, and needle size, but fails to give us the weight of the Without this info, it could be difficult to substitute this yarn for another in a project. The easiest way to overcome this problem and find out the weight is to compare it to other yarns and their labels. If you're in the yarn store, just look around for a yarn that looks comparable. Then check the needle size on each label. When the needle size matches, this will be an indication that the weight of the yarn is similar. Write down the weight number on your yarn label and you'll be set for your next project. So remember, each yarn label will look different, but if you know what to look for, you can easily understand any of them you find.