Now that I have a scale that measures small amounts, I can figure out how much yarn I’ve used and how much yarn I have left, and if you have one you can, too. It’s pretty easy, and it will help when it’s time to plan projects using unfinished skeins. It can also help if you’re breaking up a huge skein and winding it into more manageable balls. All you need is a kitchen scale and some basic math.

To do this, you will need to set up a length-to weight (or weight-to-length–it doesn’t matter as long as you’re consistent) proportion. You need to know three things: the weight of a full skein, the length of a full skein, and the weight of your partial skein. The first two should be printed on the label. If you’ve lost the label but know the yarn, check Ravelry, the manufacturer’s site, or a site that sells that particular yarn to find that information. (Note: if you’re on Ravelry, then just use your stash page, put in the weight you have left, and the site will calculate the length for you.)

The proportion will be set up as:

full length / full weight = partial length / partial weight

For my example, I’m using a ball of KnitPicks Palette. The band lists a full ball as 231 yards and 50 grams.

Remember to give your scale time to settle on a number. My partial ball weighs 17 grams.

So I’m left with 231 yards / 50 grams = x yards / 17 grams. That works out to a result of almost 79 yards. If you want to know how many yards you’ve used simply subtract your result from the total (for that ball, it’s about 152 yards).

And that’s it! Again, this is only an approximation. There are many factors that make it hard to get an exact number. Questions? Feel free to leave a comment below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 at 12:00 AM by Candace and is filed under Tutorials and Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.