First published in The Inside Loop, Spring 2008
So you’ve found the perfect jumper/cardigan/legwarmer pattern and you just HAVE to knit it. But the yarn in the pattern is discontinued, not easy to buy where you live, makes you itch, or is just too expensive. The answer is to substitute. It can seem confusing and complex, but a little bit of extra work is all that’s needed.
Firstly, research the yarn used in the pattern. Although the pattern will have some information about the yarn, it’s useful to know what the normal tension is and to check the meterage and fibre content.
Is the yarn being knitted at the manufacturers recommended tension, or is it being knitted more tightly or loosely to create a specific effect? As an example, say the yarn used in a pattern is an aran weight, but the pattern tension is 24 sts to 10cm because the designer wanted a firmer fabric. Substituting with a yarn that normally knits at the pattern tension would mean the intended texture would be lost.
The same applies if you’re changing fibres because of allergies or other reasons. Your substitute yarn needs to give the same effect as the one in the pattern. So if you want to substitute for a silk yarn that drapes and creates a fluid fabric, look at other fibres that give the same result, such as bamboo or linen, rather than choosing a crisp fibre like cotton.
Colour also can have an effect on how a pattern looks. An intricate stitch pattern can be lost if a yarn has too many different colours dominating the stitches.
So when you’ve chosen your yarn, how much do you need? Even if you’re substituting two seemingly identical yarns, don’t simply buy ten 50g balls of your substitute yarn just because your pattern calls for ten 50g balls of the original yarn. Although the meterage of the two yarns may vary by only a few metres, over several balls this can equal almost one extra ball needed. And if you don’t buy enough yarn, that raises its own problems!
For example, if the yarn used in the pattern has 120 metres per 50g, and the pattern requires twelve balls for your size, that’s a total of 1440 metres of yarn for the whole garment. Your substitute yarn, however, has 112 metres per 50g. To find out how many balls you need, divide the total meterage by the meterage per 50g of your substitute yarn. 1440 ÷ 112 = 12.8 balls – almost one more ball of yarn than the original pattern.
Finally, although it’s tedious, the greatest advice I can give is to SWATCH! Swatch with your new yarn to get the pattern tension, even if both yarns claim to have the same tension on the ball band. When you’re making a drastic deviation from the pattern yarn, it’s well worth buying just one ball of your substitute yarn to swatch with before committing to buying a whole pack of a yarn that doesn’t work. Make a swatch to check that any stitch patterns are showing up clearly.
Spending a bit of time before you start a project will make your substitution successful. A little bit of extra work at the beginning is all that’s needed to save a lot of disappointment at the end.
