I’m going to share with you one of my favorite pieces of knitting equipment.  It’s something a little unexpected, but super useful.  It’s great for planning new projects.  And it’s something you might already have… in your kitchen.

It’s a little scale!

Instead of measuring the length of yarn (which would be both annoying and very very difficult), I weigh it.  A new skein of yarn will always have the weight and length (for example, 100g and 250 yards) on the label, so with a little math, you’ll be able to figure out how many yards are in any half-finished ball of yarn.

This is the one I have.  I love it.  It’s got settings for grams and ounces (I like using grams, since they’re a little more accurate than ounces).  It’s also great, because the little control panel/readout can be pulled away, if you’re weighing something big (like a bowl of cherries or a whole sweater).But, mostly I like this one because it’s the one we already had (we got it as a wedding gift years ago). Really, any fairly accurate kitchen scale works for weighing yarn.

So, what do I use my scale for?

Just about anything where I’m trying to estimate, predict, or calculate how much yarn I have left or how much yarn I need for a project or how much yarn I’ve already used.

For example.  I’m making a sweater, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to have enough yarn to finish the sleeves.  So, I weighed the sleeveless sweater and marked down that weight.  Then I knit one sleeve and weighed it again.  Then, with a little math, I figured out how much yarn I used for one sleeve, and therefore how much yarn I’ll need for the second one. (Spoiler: I’ve got enough yarn for the second sleeve!  Yay!)

I’ve also used my scale to plan out my mother bears.  I figured out how many grams of yarn I need for each part of a bear (skin, pants, etc.).  Then, I can go through my stash and weigh my bits of yarn to figure out which are big enough for another bear.

I try remember how much yarn I use of each skein of yarn, but sometimes yarn lives in my stash for so long, I forget what I used it for.  So, again I break out the scale to get an estimate on how much of a half-finished skein is left, which helps when I’m planning out a new project.

It seems like a silly addition to a knitting stash, but a scale is super useful!

Do you have a favorite knitting tool that you re-purposed from somewhere else?