Tag Archives: yardage

Guesstimates

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I’ve been knitting for decades.

I’ve been knitting sweaters for almost as long.

I’ve been designing my own patterns for close to 10 years, and professionally writing patterns for more than 5 years.

And no matter how I try, I still can’t accurately estimate how much yarn I need for a project.

Example 1A: My Provincial Tweed Sweater.IMG_0331I’ve been working on this bad boy for a while now, off and on over the last few months.  I’ve gotten the body done to about hip length (it still needs the nice long ribbed hem that I have planned for it).  It’s currently 15″ from the underarm.  A nice, generous length for a sweater.IMG_0337I have used up 2 skeins of yarn to get this far.  I originally thought I’d use 10 skeins.

Now I’m thinking I’ll maybe use 4 skeins.  I’ve poorly estimated yarn yardage before, but dang… I was very very wrong this time.IMG_0322I guess everyone is getting blue tweed sweaters for Christmas.

Have you mis-estimated your yardage before?  How badly were you off?

A Super Exciting Post About Yardage and Budgets

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Yarn does not grow on trees (if only… that would be amazing.  Scientists: get on that).    And there are only so many hours in the day.  It’s still relatively early in December, but you are probably starting to feel the pinch.  Obviously, knitting big projects takes more time than knitting little projects (because… duh), so banging out a sweater in two weeks (while that would be amazing) is probably not going to happen.

When I want to make someone a knitted gift, my usual go-tos are knitted accessories: hats, mittens/gloves, and scarves.  Accessories are always useful, appreciated, don’t usually need to be washed (and potentially ruined), and are small enough that you can finish a project in the time it takes to watch a Sunday marathon of Law & Order.

I’ve undertaken a semi-scientific* study of some of the knitted accessories I have sitting in a box in my closet.  I wanted to see about how much yarn I used in each project, but I didn’t want to unravel everything and measure it out (because I’m not a masochist).  Instead, I broke out the kitchen scale and weighed each item, which will let me estimate of how much yarn each type of project requires.

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After much data collection and number crunching**, here’s what I found out:

A hat uses approximately the same amount of yarn as a pair of mittens. ***

A scarf uses about 2 to 3 times as much yarn as a hat or a pair of mittens.

So, if you’re trying to save money, time, and yarn, try making a gift hat.  If you’re feeling generous, how about a nice long scarf?

*Not at all scientific.

**I measured three of each item all knit with worsted-ish yarn (three pairs of mittens, three scarves, three hats) and averaged the weights.

***Note: my mittens were knit at a slightly finer gauge than my hats and scarves.  So while they may weighed the same, the mittens used more yardage, and probably took more time to knit up.