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Yarndex.com Your Source For…..

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You wanted it, you got it. This is my primo source. I NEVER (and I repeat: NEVER) knit a pattern with the yarn that is recommended. There are a plethora of reasons for this, mostly centering around the fact that the brain currently housed in my little head isn’t very organized.

But enough of that. I have enough yarn in my stash room to substitute just about anything. So what do I do?

I find out how many yards of yarn I need for my project. Then I connect to www.yarndex.com and find the brand and name of the yarn that is required and find out both the weight of the yarn and how many yards are on each skein. From there I multiply how many yards on each skein by how many skeins are called for to give me the total yardage suggested for my project. I then take that number into my own private lys yarn room and go from there.

That’s my best advice for substituting yarn. You can always take 2 or more lighter weight yarns and hold them together to get a heavier weight also, but that’s kind of sketchy.

Comments

  1. THANK YOU!! My private yarn room – closet, garage, under the bed, behind the sofa – will appreciate the help too!

  2. Thank you so much for your endorsement of Yarndex.com and your description of how you use our yarn reference library. We at Yarndex really appreciate hearing about how knitters, crocheters, weavers, designers, really anyone with a passion for yarn enjoys exploring all those options (over 5,000 yarns to date and still growing)!

    Thanks again for your support,

    Jan and the Yarndex Yarn Enthusiasts

  4. Can anyone advise me on a substitute yarn for Red heart and TLC Baby Amore Yarn. The size of hook is 5mm. I need various soft baby colour. I don’t understand the term worsted but the blanket is the first I have done. Will using a different wool affect the size or the pattern which is of little baby ducks, dogs, cats and dogs. I would appreciate some advice. Thank you in anticipation.

  5. Hi Tina,
    Worsted is a standard size, a tad bit heavier than DK but less than bulky. I don’t know how crochet hooks size up as far as worsted weight yarns, you’d have to ask JD, our crochet editor. I’d think, with a child’s sweater that will most likely be machine washed and dried, you’d want to have all the same makeup of yarn (ie, all cotton, or all wool….).
    Hope this helps!

    Terrye

  6. Have a Beret pattern caling for Croajingolong yarn. Haven’t been able to find m uch on it. How about a substitute, please.

Have you read?

Book Review: The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible

It’s one thing to follow a knitting pattern and get the fit that the designer wanted for that particular project. But it’s quite another thing to decide how you want your sweater to fit and making a project work for you. 

Designer Kim McBrien Evans aims to help knitters understand why sweater patterns don’t always work for them the way they expect and what to do about it in her book The Knitter’s Sweater Fitting Bible.

She describes the book as containing “everything I’ve learned about sweaters, bodies, and the art of fit.” It covers how to plan for a good fit through things like taking measurements and choosing the correct size to knit, understanding ease, reading schematics and fixing fit issues. 

Sweater style templates give knitters a place to start knitting better sweaters with made to measure patterns that work with any body, any yarn and any gauge. The book is designed to give knitters confidence to go their own way whether they’re modifying existing patterns, using one of the templates or designing their own custom sweater.

McBrien Evans argues that the best way to make a sweater that will fit well and stand up to lots of wearing is to work from the top down flat in pieces that are seamed when the knitting is done (the exception being circular yoke sweaters, which are worked in the round from the top down). She offers advice for making seaming easier like using selvedges and short rows.

She goes into a lot of detail on how and where to measure yourself and how to understand schematics in knitting patterns to help you choose the correct size for you and know where to adjust. The fixing fit chapter covers how to fit a sweater to your body from the shoulders down, with tips for things like balancing uneven shoulder height, accommodating a larger bust, using different shaping on the front and back of a sweater for better fit, fixing neckline depth and fixing sleeve and body lengths. 

The book includes photos and drawings of people of different sizes and with physical differences such as a smaller limb or having a mastectomy on one side, which is nice and helps you see how these concepts work on different bodies. 

The sweater templates offer options like a straight body, A-line and waist shaping body; set in sleeve caps and armholes, straight raglans and modular compound raglans, drop shoulders and circular yoke shaping; crew, scoop and V-neck options; a variety of sleeve templates, neckline finishes, and button hole options for cardigans. 

It’s easy for all this to feel overwhelming if you’re trying to read the book cover to cover, but it’s good to know that all of those options are there if you need them. There are also nine design profile sweaters that show you how all the pieces go together that you can knit through to help you understand some of the concepts. 

A fit kit in the back walks you through the math so you’ll feel comfortable with things like determining your rate of shaping, adding darts, shaping diagonals and calculating the lengths of curved edges, among other things. 

The good news is you’re not going to need all of these tools for every project. The better news is that now you know these are things you can do to make your sweaters fit better, and you’ll have McBrien Evans as your able guide every step of the way. 

While this might not be a book you want to spring on a new sweater knitter, it’s a guide that everyone who enjoys knitting garments should have on hand to reference ways to make sweaters they want to knit — from written patterns or designing for themselves — that much better. 

About the book: 192 pages, hardcover, 9 patterns. Published 2026 by David & Charles. Suggested retail price $29.99.