How to: substitute yarn

Yarns can be costly, but with a little practice it’s easy to find cheaper alternatives

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Patterns generally tell you which yarn to use. This is especially true of free patterns from companies such as Rowan, Red Heart or Designer Yarns, which are giving away the pattern in the hope that you'll buy the yarn. The latter is often much more costly than the former so it makes good business sense.

Yarn, some yarn at least, can be extremely expensive. Debbie Bliss, Louisa Harding and Noro yarns, for example, are gorgeous – but you pay for that gorgeousness. Rowan is one of my particular bugbears. The company's yarns are expensive, but I've never seen anything particularly special about them. This is just my opinion, of course, and I'm sure there are plenty of knitters out there who love Rowan's yarns. I'm just not one of them.

The big secret here, known by all experienced knitters, is that you don't have to use the suggested yarn. It's one of those things that tends to make me a bit cross, because the less experienced knitter is the least likely to experiment with different yarns, not understanding that many of them will perform just as well as the one given in a pattern.

If I'd insisted on using this silk despite the pattern advising me otherwise then this would have been my own fault; but no, this was the yarn suggested

I made my first-ever big project in mulberry silk. This gorgeous, soft, iridescent yarn set me back a good 50 quid in total. The project was a disaster. The pattern was badly written and I didn't have the knowledge to recognise that, so I slavishly followed it to the bitter end. I wore the resulting T-shirt a handful of times and then donated it to a local charity shop. I don't know what happened to it after that, although I never saw it in the shop. Really it was nothing more than an expensive lesson: make your first few projects in acrylic, or at least cheap wool.

If I'd insisted on using this silk despite the pattern advising me otherwise then this would have been my own fault. But no, this was the yarn suggested. In a magazine aimed at beginners and a pattern slated as being an ideal starter pattern. As someone who would like to be able to describe themselves as a designer I would never suggest silk in a beginner pattern. It's just too expensive. I'd also never suggest Rowan's Kidsilk Haze, for example. It's a beautiful yarn, but so hard to work with. Alpaca is also completely inappropriate – it costs too much.

But this doesn't mean that new knitters – or indeed those on a budget – should give up. Substituting yarn is actually very easy, if you know what you're doing.

Quality control
The first thing to understand is that different yarns behave in different ways. From the point of view of knitting, wool and acrylic are pretty much interchangeable. But in use, wool is very warm, breathable and moisture wicking in ways that acrylic can't mimic; this is especially true of merino. So consider how your finished project is going to be used. A lot of winter cycling jerseys are made from merino (or at least a merino blend) because of this material's qualities. An acrylic cycling jersey would be itchy, sweaty and uncomfortable. But a winter sweater will be fine in acrylic.

A good compromise is a wool/acrylic mix. These will be much cheaper than a pure wool; they're also very easy to knit with so ideal for a beginner.

Cotton is a very difficult yarn to switch. It's tough and hardwearing, it's warm in winter and cooling in summer. It also gives exceptional stitch definition. Neither wool nor acrylic can really match it, so your best bet is to find a cheaper manufacturer. This is eminently possible.

I recently found a free pattern for a stunning picnic blanket. It was a Rowan pattern and if I'd used the yarn suggested it would have cost more than £200. Given that I could buy a picnic blanket from Primark for about a fiver, that's rather expensive. So instead I went to my favourite substitute manufacturer: Rico. This German yarnmaker creates lovely yarns at a fraction of the cost of many other companies. Wherever possible I use Rico yarns instead of Rowan or Debbie Bliss. Using Rico Essentials Cotton I saved more than £100.

Again, using a mix would have saved me even more. An acrylic/cotton mix would have had all the properties of cotton but cost much less. It's also a good way to illustrate my frustration with Rowan. The manufacturer does a very nice mix called All Seasons Cotton, but then so does James C Brett, Cotton On. The latter is less than half the cost (around £2 per ball) of the former (around £5).

Can you tell the difference? The one on the left is James C Brett's
On Cotton. It costs £2 per ball and is a cotton/acrylic mix.
On the right is Rowan's All Seasons Cotton.
Another cotton/acrylic mix, it costs about £5.

Some yarns you simply can't match. Silk and linen would examples of these. This doesn't mean you can't substitute them. It just means you have to accept that you're going to lose the qualities of these yarns. Silk, for example, is wonderfully light and iridescent. It's a beautiful yarn to work with and I've never found a man-made substitute that comes close, though several acrylics try. A shawl made in this material will have certain properties that the same shawl made in wool won't have. But this doesn't mean that the wool shawl – or even an acrylic one – won't be as lovely as the silk one.

Tension headache
Pretty much the most important thing to remember when substituting yarn is tension. All patterns should give a gauge. This will be the number of stitches/rows per 10cm using the yarn and needle size suggested. You'll then be advised to use a smaller or larger needle – depending on the tightness of your tension – to achieve that gauge.

Gauge is a very personal thing and will depend on what type of knitter you are. If you knit tightly then your gauge will will smaller than average; if you knit loosely it will be larger. Changing needle size is one way of adjusting this. So if you tend to knit loosely, changing down a needle size from that suggested (for example from 4.5mm to 4mm) could result in the right tension. Conversely, if you knit tightly go up a needle size – or even two if need be.

The other option is to change the thickness (known as weight) of the yarn. Maybe try a 4-ply instead of double knit if you knit particularly loosely. This choice actually isn't the best. Changing the weight of the yarn will change the look of the final project much more than changing the size of the needle. This option works better for items like blankets in which the final size isn't that crucial.

When substituting a yarn you should always read the ball band. This will give you the suggested needle size and gauge. Keep in mind that this might not be the same as that given in the pattern as a designer might be trying to achieve a certain look that requires a tighter or looser tension. However, matching the information given on the ball band as closely as possible will help you achieve the gauge in the pattern, even if you do need to adjust your needle size.

You should always make a tension square, but this is
especially true when substituting yarns.
Remember to block your square, too.

With things like blankets and shawls gauge isn't that important, and I recently bought a chunky yarn to make a blanket that called for an aran. I'll just use the needle size given on the ball band and won't bother with a tension square – in this case I know what I've got will be much bigger than the size given. But it's a blanket so it really doesn't matter. Think about it: who's going to argue with getting a bigger blanket?

This isn't true of items of clothing, which we want to fit properly. In this case, you need to make sure that your alternative yarn has the same gauge.

Let's assume that you're making an item of clothing for which the sizing is important: a jumper that you want to fit. The sweater is made in a 4-ply alpaca yarn. This is really quite expensive and making it would set you back more than £50 – much more than buying something similar in Marks and Sparks. So you want to make the project in acrylic or lamb's wool. Neither of these materials will exactly mimic the properties of alpaca, which is famously lightweight, moisture wicking, warm in cool temperatures and cool in warm.

These properties aren't significant, though, and you just want to make a nice sweater. The first thing to do is look at all the 4-ply yarns available to you. A little practice will make you better at this. For example, if the pattern calls for alpaca, it only takes a few attempts to realise that cotton won't make a good substitute. So once you've discounted anything that won't work you can look at those that might. For this project you should be looking for a pure wool that comes up with a similar gauge on a similar needle size. The rest can be adjusted using different needle sizes.