Making Yarn: Tools I Didn't Know I would Need

There are lots of things I used to take for granted when buying ready-made yarn from a store. For example, I never asked how one would figure out the yardage of yarn on a skein, or the weight of the yarn. As long as the yarn came with a label that had this information printed on it, I felt content that I had all the information I needed. Until I started shopping outside of Joann's and Michael's I didn't even know that not all yarn comes in a compact, easy-to use ball or center-pull skein, and that many shops sell it in twisted skeins that need to be wound into a ball!

Since I began spinning my own yarn, I have learned a lot not only about how yarn is made, but also how it is prepared and measured. 

For example, this scale (which you saw a few months ago) is perfect for estimating shipping on tiny items, and for measuring how many grams or ounces of yarn you have!

If you want to transfer your freshly spun yarn from your spindle to a skein, it is helpful to have a niddy-noddy, which is a funny name for a tool that looks like this and makes a nice even skein when you wind your yarn around it. I have yet to aquire a niddy-noddy, so I wrap my skein around the back of a chair, which works okay.

One of my friends gave me an electric yarn ball winder for turning that skein into a ball, once it's all washed and finished. I ordered a swift (that blue thing on the left) from Joann's to assist with the ball-winding process.

When it's done, this ball of yarn looks pretty professional for only my second batch of homespun.

When I bought my yarn in Guatemala, I learned a couple other yarn measuring tricks. For the most part I felt pretty successful at communicating in Spanish, but when I asked the lady who sold me the yarn how much was on the skein, all I was able to understand was that they don't measure in meters. Maybe they use yards, but I assumed they didn't so I didn't learn the word for that. When I returned to los Estados Unidos, lamenting the fact that I had no idea how much yarn was on the skein, one of my friends taught me a neat trick:

1) First, stretch out your skein of yarn, similarly to how it appears in the chair picture above. 

2) Measure the length of the skein from one side to the other.

3) Count the number of strands 

4) Do a little math: (The length of the skein) x (The number of strands) x (2, because the skein was folded in half when you measured it) = The total lenth of yarn on the skein! 

Thanks to this trick, I now know that one of my skeins from Guatemala has about 827 yards on it! 

My friend also taught me a useful trick for measuring the weight of the yarn. I tend to estimate weight by sight a lot but if you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can measure wraps per inch. This means wrapping your yarn around a ruler or other measuring device and counting how many wraps it takes to cover 1 inch. Next, find a chart to tell you how many wraps per inch equals which weight. It frustrates me that every chart seems a little different, but I guess that's why we always check our guage, right?

This yarn took 18 wraps to equal 1 inch. According to this chart on Craftsy that's a thin sportweight, just barely above fingering weight. I'm using it with a pattern that calls for fingering weight and it's working well.

I hope you find some of these tricks and tools useful, I know I have!

-Assunta