Hi all, I recently purchased a pattern for a lovely cable knit jumper for a Christmas present, but I’m having trouble finding yarn for it. It says it’s an aran jumper, but the tension is given as 28sts x 26 rows to 10cm on 4.5mm needles, which doesn’t seem right to me - I had in mind that an aran jumper is between 16-20 stitches and 20-24 rows. It seems odd that the pattern is saying to do more stitches than rows, I’ve never seen that before. Can anyone help me out? I don’t know if I’m just being silly and missing something here, but some advice would be hugely appreciated! Or if anyone has any yarn recommendations that fit these criteria I’d love to hear them.
Thanks so much in advance!
Welcome to KH!
What is the name of your pattern?
There may be a couple of things affecting gauge.
- Aran is used to describe intricate cable knit sweaters and also to describe a yarn weight. So an aran cabled sweater might be knit with worsted weight or DK or finer yarn.
- Over what stitch pattern is the gauge measured? If no pattern is noted it’s probably stockinette but it may say, “…over the cable chart pattern.”
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Thank you for the welcome and the reply! I believe the pattern is from a book called “The Essential Aran Book” and it says it’s design 11, but it’s just a scanned version I bought off someone on ebay so I’m not sure how useful that information is to you. I’ll attach a photo of it and the information regarding the tension below.
As far as I can tell, the yarns suggested here are no longer readily available, hence why I’m struggling to find something suitable.
Also, thanks for explaining that aran referrs to any intricate cable knit jumper, I didn’t know that before and had always wondered why cable knit jumpers always seemed to use aran wool!
I hope these pictures are of some help to you, and thanks again for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it a lot!
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The photos are perfect. It’s a great looking sweater and an absorbing knit.
The tension is measured over the pattern stitches so the cables are going to pull in the width. It looks like the yarns are indeed aran weight, 18-20sts/4inches.
Ravelry is a good source of information on yarns, even discontinued ones or ones that are unavailable.
https://www.ravelry.com/yarns/library/hayfield-grampian-aran
https://www.ravelry.com/yarns/library/hayfield-brig-aran
https://www.ravelry.com/yarns/library/hayfield-aran-with-wool
It sounds like a yarn with good stitch definition that knits at 18-20sts/4" in stockinette will work.
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Ah brilliant, that makes perfect sense, thank you so much for helping me out with that! I just have one quick question, if that’s okay? How do you work out that 18-20 sts would be the gauge in stockinette? Is there just a general rule of thumb you can apply for cable knit in situations such as this?
Oh, nothing so clever as that. I looked at the pattern yarns on Ravelry where the gauge is given in stockinette (the default) and saw that they were in that range. Of course, it depends on the gauge that you get for the yarn and needles but at least that’s in the ballpark.
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Ah I see, well, worth an ask anyway! I think I’m good to get going with it now, fingers crossed I don’t hit too many more issues. Thank you so much for all your help, you’re a real life saver!
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