your knitting pantry

And you thought kitchen scales were for cooking! My scale is just as likely to be covered in yarn as all purp flour. It’s especially handy when I’m stash diving for a new project.

Ironically, while the global pandemic rages on, there are quite a few babies popping up around me. That’s all the excuse I need to get busy. Actually - not true. I don’t need any excuses! For a spring baby, I will knit a size 6-12m to fit next fall. By that time, she will be wearing little person clothes and a tiny cardi will come in handy.  

I’ve decided to knit Beebo for baby Una, which calls for 2 skeins (200g) of worsted weight wool. But how much do I really need?  The yarn requirements in any pattern, mine included, overestimate the yarn needed for the project by about 10%. This allows for swatching and the difference in knitters’ gauges. That amount of yarn is then rounded up to full skeins.  I pulled the lilac Beebo cardi from the 10tk pile that happened to be 6-12m and plopped her on the scale. At 167g, that’s significantly less than 2 skeins.

If there’s one thing that I’ve realized since coronavirus descended - it’s how hard it is to prepare for a lockdown. Within 10 minutes of the discovery of the first case of coronavirus in the United States the entire American toilet paper supply vanished. About a month ago, I realized that if I was going to start on the next batch of designs during a quarantine, I need yarn! Panic set in quickly and I started aimlessly shopping for yarn with no specific projects in mind. Then I looked around at my 12 tubs of yarn (yikes) and the giant basket of wool that sits in front of me (double yikes) and I remembered I have more yarn than I will probably live to knit. I’m going to see what I can do with my knitting pantry full of yarn - at least for the swatching phase. It’s the only responsible course of action.

If you’re a prepper-knitter, it might be worth keeping a list in the notes section of your phone, of the weights and gauges of the items you are likely to repeat. Yarn is typically sold in 50 or 100g skeins. Say you’re a sock knitter, and you like mid-calf length socks. Weigh a pair of socks that you have made! Then, when you see a sock yarn you like, you will know how much to buy or you can calculate whether you have enough in your stash. If you don’t have enough of a single color - stripe it! Generally speaking, when we talk about sweaters, a garments made with dk weight yarn will be lighter than worsted, and bulky weight projects will be heavier. Likewise a heavily textured garment covered in cables will require about 25% more yarn than a similarly sized garment of simple stockinette. 

As a professional yarn hoarder, I thought I must have enough stash yarn make a new Beebo. When I poked through my giant basket of leftovers from 10tk I found 187 grams in a natural shade of ivory. Perfect. Now I don’t have to play yarn chicken (so stressful!). I’d much rather spend my knitting time focusing on more important things - like what those crazy kids are up to on the next episode of Schitt’$ Creek.