I'll say sorry now to those of you who read this blog and are not spinners or knitters, because this post is all about a topic which has confounded me for a very long time.
Each morning I wake up and after having gotten breakfast for everyone I sit down at the computer and read the news, the weather, and then Knitting Daily which is an e-newsletter that I subscribe to. Sometimes it's really not interesting and sometimes it is. This morning was one of those mornings that was really interesting. They were talking about w.p.i. (which, for those of you who insist on reading this even though you are not a spinner, is wraps per inch). Not many knitters use wpi but this morning there was quite and enlightening article about w.p.i. Basically the gist of the story was that a lady who was confounded by wpi decided to test how reliable it was. She made wpi measures out of firm paper printed with a graph of 1/4 inch grid. Then she gave them to several fellow knitters. She handed each of her subjects a length of yarn and had them wrap the yarn around 2 inches. She was careful to tell them not to wrap too tightly and not too loosely. The strand had to be touching but not squeezed or squashed. Then she did this with several different strands of yarn. Each time her subjects were given the same kind of yarn. The wpi measurements that they got were very different, and none of them were consistently high or consistently low. Nope, their wpi measurements were all over the board.
I have always felt that w.p.i. was an unacceptable measurement. I wouldn't mind trying this experiment myself. I would like to test these results. For a knitter following w.p.i. it can be a really big problem when using a different yarn from what is being used in the actual pattern.
In the last few days, while I have been nursing my back and trying to rid myself of phlegm, (yes, the first cold of the season) I have been looking at a lot of knitting patterns, especially in Vogue Knitting, which I have subscribed to many years. Vogue knitting has one problem.... that is that they are printed and published in New York and they seem to think that nobody lives outside of New York and that we can all run out and buy the type of yarn specified for the project with ease. Now all of us who live in the North, in rural setting know how laughable this is. But as I was perusing the pattern yesterday I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could spin that yarn.
For spinners w.p.i. as well as t.p.i. and a.o.t. are absolute musts. Angle of twist will determine how the yarn handles, w.p.i. will give the right guage. Without them you're shooting in the dark.
My wish is that all knitting publications including Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits, the two knitting giants of the world, would publish all patterns with yarn resources.... and that include t.p.i., w.p.i., and a.o.t. They way it is easier to duplicate the yarn. It might be good to include the number of plies (which usually is on the label though I have come across some labels that don't include the number of plies) and the type of yarn and percentage of any blends in the yarn wouldn't hurt either.
So w.p.i. well it might not be a reliable way of knowing whether or not it will work in a pattern but it sure is important if you're going to duplicate a yarn.... besides if you measured your w.p.i. now and got one thing and then measured the same yarn later in the day and got something else then you would have to worry!
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