All things being equal-----same person, same yarn, same pattern, same time of day, same stress level, same cycle of the moon, all that------Is there a table (or spreadsheet model) that gives an approximation of the effect of moving up or down one needle size?
For example, what percentage smaller would something be if knit with a size 2 in stockinet instead of a size 3 in stockinet with the same yarn? Or size 4 verus 7, or 8 versus 3, or 2 versus 4, and so on.
Welcome to KH!
I’ve never seen such a table. Considering all the parameters, it would have to be huge.
I have heard that going up or down a US needle size changes the gauge by 0.5sts/inch. That certainly hasn’t proven true for my own knitting but maybe it’ll work for you.
Hi Salmonmac
Thanks for your reply.
Given the only 11 or so common US needle sizes (0-10), given knitting has been performed for many, many hundreds of years, given the millions of knitters around the world, and given today’s common 64-bit computer systems, computing the percentage change from one needle size to another would be a rather elementary computation.
It surprises me this fairly simple math equation wasn’t developed long ago.
I could do it manually just by creating swatches using the 11 needle sizes with fingering weight yarn. I’m just dumbfounded to think this question was solved eons ago.
I appreciate your input that going up or down a US needle size changes the gauge by approx 0.5 sts/in. It essentially answers what I wanted to know.
Part of the problem lies in the partial list of givens in your first post. There are so many yarns of varying thickness just within one category, even fingering weight. Stress level isn’t the same from day to day or even hour to hour. Tension can change from the beginning of a project to the end. One may not always knit at the same time of day. Humidity affects tension and yarn as well as the knitter. And it goes on.
I don’t want to discourage you from doing this however. If you go ahead, I’ll be interested in the results.
And it also depends on people’s own personal knitting gauges!! I know that I, personally knit very loosely. So my variations from needle size to size will be different from someone else’s.
I think that’s why no chart like that has been published!!
Knitcindy