Knitting Needle Conversions
Different Needle Sizing Conventions Explained and Explored.
How to make sense of Knitting Needle sizes on international and vintage patterns, including link to free vintage patterns at the UK Victoria and Albert Museum.
One of the exciting aspects about looking at knitting patterns on the internet is that there is access to a massive wide range of different patterns and designs. Not only are these designs and patterns written by designers from around the world, but also there are patterns available on the internet which were written many years ago, giving a wealth of choice for today’s knitter.
However, as different countries adopt different knitting needle-size descriptions (and countries such as the UK have moved to a metric system) sometimes it can be unclear which needle sizing definitions the instructions are referring to. For instance a vintage knitting pattern might have been written in the UK and therefore uses the old British needle sizes, but this might not be clear from a first glance at the pattern. This can sometimes lead to confusion, and sadly occasionally this might put someone off from trying a pattern that uses slightly unfamiliar terms. For instance, the famous British Museum, the Victoria and Albert has some vintage British Knitting patterns free on their website (see below), which although makes exciting reading, means that before undertaking a project the correct needle sizes must be defined.
It is very straightforward to convert needle sizes from the US size range to metric and lots of information about this, including a conversion table, can be found on the yarnstandards.com website. Whilst in the UK and Canada, knitting needle sizes are now typically metric, there are many old and vintage patterns which refer to the previous sizing standards. There are many conversion charts available on the internet, a comprehensive chart giving conversions between US, metric and old UK can be found at yarnforward.com.
If any knitter is unfamiliar or uncomfortable about metric sizing – one of the key things to remember is the smaller the number, the smaller the needle size. Therefore a 2mm needle is a US 0 and a 25mm needle is a US 50. (Note: With the old UK system the smaller the number the larger the needle size!).
Free British Vintage Knitting Patterns
Hopefully the conversion charts mentioned will help making many more knitting patterns accessible. If you fancy knitting something a little different the Victoria and Albert museum has a range of free knitting patterns on their website from the 1940’s. These are available for downloading or printing from Word or as a PDF document.
More information about where to find vintage knitting patterns can be found at the end of the Suite101 article here.
