A Guide to Yarn Weights

I came across this chart (below) in one of my old Dubied manuals. I find it extremely useful as a ballpark guide to appropriate yarn weights for machines of different gauges. The columns in english translate as: knit gauge, machine guage, wool nm gauge, wool bradford gauge, cotton gauge and lastly, silk gauge.
The formats of yarn measure are still quite diverse depending on whether you hand knit, machine knit (using yarn for hand knits) or machine knit using industrial yarn. This chart eschews the common sport, dk and fingering weight measure for something more precise: the nm measure. Nm (the abbreviation for the metric system) is the number of meters in 1 gram of yarn. 

3/11 = Sport Weight
4/8 = Worsted Weight
2/11and 3/15 = Fingering Weight
2/20 and 2/24 = Fine weight
2 strands of 2/24 together = Fingering Weight.

Nm comes with the caveat that it can be rather confusing, thus the usefulness of this chart. Referring to the "machine gauge" column this chart tells me that (under wool nm gauge) my machine will happily knit 10 different nm gauges of wool yarn. Simple really.
Another nice feature is cross referencing appropriate yarns for 10 gauge machines with 8 gauge. I favour 2/24 and 2/28 nm laceweight yarn and both machines love it!

Listed are a few suppliers I love all using nm yarn measure:
http://www.colourmart.com
http://knollyarns.com/
http://www.craftingfashion.com/
http://www.theyarnstore.co.uk

Also within the same book were these fantastic patterns. I'm afraid its also in Italian just like the chart but you can tell a lot from the pictures and the corresponding pattern notations. Enjoy.