London Yarns is one of Southwestern Ontario's largest yarn shops offering a huge selection of yarns, fibres, notions, and patterns.
02/14/2025
Do you have a question about your knitting that you need an answer to? Is something just not quite right? Knitting tends to have so many “unwritten rules” that need to be “written”!
Feel free to reach out to Janet and ask her your questions. Every week we will highlight a question from one of our readers and Janet will do her best to solve their knitting dilemma.
Answer:
Dear Alicia: The answer to your problem involves one word: YARDAGE! It has always made me wonder why yarn was sold by weight and not by the number of yards or metres. Let’s look at this example using 2 yarns we actually carry in the store. King Cole Bamboo Cotton DK is put up in a 100-gram ball and each ball contains 230 metres. Berroco Vintage DK is also put up in a 100-gram skein and each skein contains 265 metres. Both of these yarns will give you a perfect DK weight gauge when you knit with them, but their yardage differs. Seven balls of Bamboo Cotton will total 1,610 metres while 7 skeins of Vintage DK will total 1,855 metres! That is a difference of 245 metres! So, if your pattern had called for yarn with better yardage like the Vintage DK and you used Bamboo Cotton, you would be shy by over a ball whereas if your pattern had called for yarn with yardage like Bamboo Cotton and you used Vintage DK, you would have too much, you would have more than a skein left over!
Why does this happen though? Why don’t all yarns have the same yardage? The answer is usually the fibre or blend of fibres used to mill the yarn and the spinning process the yarn goes through. Some fibres are much denser than others, so a lot less yards or metres are required to achieve the desired weight of the finished ball. Cotton is a dense fibre. A 50-gram ball of cotton may only contain 100 metres, whereas a 50-gram ball of pure acrylic could contain 170 metres! That is why in the store, our signage for each yarn shows metres per ball and we are always happy to double check that you are purchasing the right quantity for your finished project. I hope this answers your question Alicia, and that this will never plague you in future projects.
- Janet
