hello i’m a new knitter and i’m just about to start working on a new pattern but i already have wool i’d like to use and it isn’t the same thickness as the suggested wool for the pattern, what will happen if i use my thinner wool? thanks
Correct wool for pattern
If you use thinner wool your FO will turn out smaller, thinner and drape"ier."
If you want to use this wool, you need to either
- use smaller needles (appropriate for the wool), and make a bigger size.
- use the needle size called for in the pattern, but cast on more stitches.
Give us the gauge for your wool and the gauge for your pattern, and we can be more specific for you.
okay thank you! i’m not very familiar with ‘gauges’ but i think the pattern says between 1200 and 1400 with 10 mm knitting needles, unfortunately the wool was given to me as a present and the label had been taken off so there’s no information on it!
The pattern will tell you the number of sts per inch you should get. This is the gauge or tension for the pattern. For the yarn you were given, you can get an estimate of the thickness of the yarn by wrapping the strand of yarn around a ruler. See how many wraps per inch you get and that will give you an estimate of the yarn thickness.
okay my pattern says tension: 9 stitches and 12 rows = 10 x 10 cm, and i got nine wraps to an inch. i’ve done a tension square with my wool and it does measure roughly 10 x 10 cm, so does this mean that i am knitting very loosely with my thinner yarn in order that the tension square is about the right size despite the differences in yarn sizes?
Yes, if your yarn is thinner and you knit with the larger needles, you’ll probably get the same gauge, but the sts will be looser and more open. For some things this may not matter, like a scarf or shawl, but you might want a little denser knit for a sweater or hat. So use smaller needles, 8 or 9 mm and see if you like that fabric. Then take your sts per inch and divide it into a larger size of the pattern (to get more stitches) and see if that will give you the finished measurement you need. What pattern are you making? If it’s online, a link to it will help us to look at it and give you more specific advice.
file:///Users/suzannajames/Documents/knit%20pattern.pdf
i can’t find the pattern online but i’ve scanned it in and that link should be it, not sure if it works though.
to get my stitches per inch to i just measure from my tension square? and what exactly do i do then to divide it into the larger size of the pattern? and how do i know the correct size of the garment? sorry! thanks
That link doesn’t work. Not really supposed to share patterns online if they are someone else anyway. 
Do you have the name of it and maybe the designer?..we can go from there.
That’s a link to your computer and we can’t open it. I meant that if you have a webbased link, we could look at it then. But since you’ve scanned it, probably not. What’s the name of it and is it in a book or magazine? Then we could do a search and see what it looks like.
oops apologies about that link then. its in a book my rico design, a lot of the book is in german but i think that the name of the book is rico knitting idea 11 Fashion Superchunky. thank you.
the specific pattern in the book i’m trying to use is for ‘long coat’
Okay, would it be this one, or this one? Those are the only 2 that looked like long coats. I can’t quite find the yarn used on the site, but it probably doesn’t matter.
With the yarn you want to use, you can double it to see if you get the same gauge and that it’s not too dense and tight a knit. If it is too tight, then use the yarn single stranded with the needles you want to use on it, and see how many sts per inch that makes. Multiply your sts times the finished measurement you want the coat to be at the bust, then see if one of the larger sizes is close to the same number of stitches you need. If so, use that size, but make the length the same measurement as the size you’d normally knit.
its the first one, number 8 
okay, that sounds complicated! thank you very much though how long do you think it will take to knit either way?
It’s not that complicated if you break down the steps. I don’t know how long it would take to knit - that all depends on how much time you have, how productive your technique is and other things.
okay thanks for your help!