Unlocking the Secrets of a Needle Gauge

Your needle gauge tool can do more than tell you the size of your knitting needle!

I'm sure anyone who knits or crochets is aware that a needle gauge is used to measure your crochet hook or knitting needle if it's not marked on the shaft. But it can do much more than measure needle sizes.

In this Instructable I'll cover:

1. How to use your needle gauge to measure your stitch and/or row gauge
2. How to use your needle gauge to figure out the needle size for mystery yarn
3. What features to look for in a needle gauge

In the first photo there are three different needle gauges, and they all have a slightly different structure.

The white Skacel gauge (don't look too closely or you'll see that it's about to break) had a few neat features:

• The gauge goes down to 000, which is 1.5mm. Not all gauges have the same range, and this is one of the largest ranges.
• The top edge can be used for measuring up to two inches.
• It's very compact! I usually have this one tied to the rings in my needle binder, so that it's always there when I need to put away the 8 pairs of interchangeable knitting needles I somehow neglected to put away after finishing a project.
• It's made of plastic so won't scuff or scar knitting needles when you put them through the gauge holes.

The gold-colored Sears needle gauge is a different format but has some similar features to the Skacel gauge:

• The top edge is a ruler, although this one goes to six inches. Both the Skacel and Sears rulers have that little "ear" at the top left, which allows you to put the inner edge at the side of a stitch and then count from left to right to find the number of stitches (or rows) in a given measurement.
• The Sears gauge also has a small two-inch measurement window, which is neat because it really isolates just part of a row of stitches. That can make a real difference if you're having trouble following a row across.
• This gauge has a more standard range of 0 to 15 (US size). Unfortunately there are not metric sizes on this, but since it's older than I am (I'm in my late 40s), that's not too surprising.

The KnitPicks View Sizer is the purple tool on the bottom right. I'm not going to cover how to use this to measure needles or your swatch because they have a pretty good instructional tool on YouTube if you search "Knit Picks View Sizer Product Demo."

• It has the holes that all needle gauges have, and it has them in both metric and Imperial.
• The left side of the ruler has a six-inch ruler, a magnifying area, and on the other side of the magnified area is in metric. One of the things that I don't love about this tool is that the ruler starts away from the edges of the tool, which means you need to make sure your measurement is starting at the right place on your knitting. Older versions of this tool, that have fewer needle measurement holes, start at the edge of the ruler. Just be aware of where your measurement should actually start.

I am going to use this KnitPicks tool for this tutorial because I used bulldog clips to hold the yarn in place, and it was the right thickness and arrangement to make it the best example for this use, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use a different format!

If you've got a yarn stash, you might be the kind of person who has some skeins or balls of yarn that don't have their tags or ball bands any more. None of the yarns in the first picture have ball bands or tags. I have lost the info for one of them, the white ball came like that from a friend, and the skeins are my handspun that I finished earlier this month.

Or maybe you're a spinner and you're not sure what weight your yarn is or what size needle to start swatching with. (Uh oh, I said "swatch" which is a dirty word with some people!)

Maybe someone gave you a tub of their aunt's/grandmother's/cousin's/whoever's stash yarn that they don't want any more, and you have no idea what size knitting needle or hook size to use.

I tend to use this method for my handspun (the pink/blue yarn and the gray fuzzy yarn), because it's nice to have a starting point for what size needle to start swatching, and my handspun isn't the most regular yarn.

The red/blue yarn has some thick and thin parts, as does the gray fuzzy, but the fuzz adds a different aspect to choosing a needle size that I'll talk about later in these instructions.

Another aspect of mystery yarn is what fiber it's made of, but that's another topic for another time.

I think this cream yarn is a bulky weight, but I'll use it as my first example of how to use a needle gauge for yarn.

First, pull out a length of yarn about 18" long (or a bit more than twice the length of the needle gauge. Gently twist the two parts of yarn together, making sure that they are about even and one isn't pulled tighter than the other.

Because I am not good at taking photos with one hand, I used bulldog clips to hold the yarn so I could have both hands free.

I clipped the ends of the yarn to one end of the ruler, centered in the line of holes, then gently twisted the yarn together. Using a medium amount of tension--not too loose and floppy, but not too tight so the yarn is distorted--I clipped the other end of the yarn to the opposite end of the ruler (first photo).

The trick is to find the hole that is almost covered by the yarn. As you swatch and get to know how YOU knit, you may find that the best place to start is either up or down one size, but for now we'll go with that as our "standard" (in quotes because nothing is really truly standard with gauge between yarns!).

Looking at the second photo, with the cream yarn, you can see that the twisted yarn covers the holes with different spacing. I didn't twist this very tightly, so with bigger yarns like this you'd want to move the whole length up and down until you can just see the sides of the hole behind it. I've pointed out that the twisted yarn has very thick and very thin areas when twisted, but the yarn is normally a consistent thickness. You'll want to make sure that you're looking at the thicker part of the twisted yarn.

I'd start with a 10 1/2 size needle for this yarn. Depending on the stitch pattern, yarn structure, etc. you may want to go up one or down, but it is a matter of personal preference.

Gray yarn

I think this is a fingering-weight yarn, and where I'd want to start would depend on what I was making with this particular yarn.

Socks would mean I'd go down two or three sizes from the hole that shows bit of space around the yarn.

A lacy shawl would mean I'd go up two or three sizes.

For me, a size 2 US or 3.00 mm would be my starting point.

Purple yarn

I think that this is an Aran weight, just above worsted but not as heavy as bulky.

This is one of those yarns you'd want to make sure you're looking at the thickest part of the twist for your starting needle size. I interpret that as a 9 US, and I'm happy to say that my gauge swatch (pictured) supports that for a plain stockinette with a fair amount of body/firmness.

These are definitely more challenging!

When I was examining these yarns for where I wanted to measure them, I tried to get one of the narrowest and one of the widest parts of the yarn, then twisted them together.

Gray fuzzy yarn

The gray yarn is a mohair that I chain plied, so it has some areas that are wider just from the structure of how it was made. Additionally, my spinning was not terribly even (I was actually going for a more rustic yarn and this was more even than I was shooting for).

Between the inconsistent width of the yarn and the fuzziness, I'd go for a 10 US as my starting point. After washing the swatch to allow the yarn to bloom and fuzz up, I'd evaluate if that was a good choice or not.

Red and blue (and a few other things) yarn

The red and blue yarn is also inconsistent, but in different ways than the gray.

This yarn is a two-ply yarn (number of plies, not weight like some other countries use) and I again tried to pull out one of the narrowest and thickest sections to get an average.

I'll probably start with a 10 1/2 US for this yarn, but again it will depend on what kind of feel I want the finished project to have.

Hopefully this will help demystify some of the yarns that have been languishing in your stash.

There are a lot more factors that play into the hand of a knit or crochet fabric, such as drape, texture, stitch pattern, stress level of the crafter, etc., but I hope this helps with your crafting adventure. I can be found on Ravelry as QuilterKat.