Unlocking the Secrets of a Needle Gauge
Introduction: 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
Step 1: Examing the Parts of 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). 972
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!
Step 2: Why Would You Want to Measure Yarn With a Needle Gauge?
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. 972