How to Estimate Yardage in an Odd Ball of Yarn

July 19, 2017 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

If you have a bit of yarn left over from a past project or any ball of yarn that has lost its ball band, it’s natural to wonder exactly how much yarn you have there.

It’s never a good idea to start a knitting project not knowing if you have enough yarn to finish it, but the good news is there are a couple of ways to estimate how much yarn you have.

The more time-consuming way to do it is to measure out a certain quantity of the yarn, say 10 or 25 yards, weigh that and determine your yards per ounce. Then weigh the whole skein and you can get a pretty good guess at the yardage.

If your yarn is in a hank, you can stretch it out, measure the length of the hank itself, count the number of strands and multiply by the length of one strand to determine yardage.

Or you can make a less scientific but still relatively accurate guess based on the average weight of yarn in the yarn weight category you’re dealing with, as outlined in this post from Interweave. If you know that you have light weight yarn (verified with a wraps per inch tool or by wrapping the yarn around a ruler), using the chart on that post you can see that you typically get 1,200 to 1,800 yards a pound in that weight of yarn.

Weigh your skeins and you can figure out a somewhat close range for how much yardage you have. Err on the side of assuming you have less to avoid tragedy.

Have you ever used one of these methods to determine yardage on unknown balls or hanks of yarn? Or do you have another method? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo: Interweave.]

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Christmas Sock Knitting Patterns

Why should the fireplace get all the fun? Instead of knitting stockings this year, why not whip up a pair of Christmas themed socks? These Christmas sock knitting patterns are lots of fun to make and you can wear them to holiday gatherings for years to come.

For our friends in the southern part of the world, there are the Christmas in July socks from the Kiwi Lodge – Kylie (Ravelry link). These shorty socks are covered in Christmas trees and have bright pink heels and toes for a tropical feel. There’s also an option to make a longer sock if you celebrate somewhere it’s colder.

Twin Stitches Designs (Ravelry) has a fun pattern with mix and match colorwork motifs you can use to build your own cozy Christmas socks. From the sample socks I see Christmas puddings, trucks hauling trees, Santa belts, ornaments and a couple of different borders. There may be more patterns included but the listing doesn’t say. Make a pair that matches or use different motifs on each foot for extra holiday cheer.

If you want to stick to Christmas puddings on your holiday socks, check out this cute pattern from Stone Knits. These lovely socks feature a band of puddings around the leg and a bit of holly by the toes.

These vintage holiday light socks from Grey Owl Knits by Sarah are classic looking and lots of fun at the same time. I love this color combination but of course you can make your lights and stripes whatever colors you like or have on hand. They’re worked using stranded knitting.

And if you’d like even more of a mix of patterns for your socks, try Barbara Ceglédi’s Christmas Chaos socks, a free pattern on Ravelry. The pattern includes 25 little motifs you can choose from, ranging from snowflakes and Christmas trees to elf hats, reindeer and hearts.

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