The Knitting Fiend

What is it with me and mechanical gadgets? I normally not a sucker for hand knitting gizmos. someone makes a mechanical gadget, I can’t resist. So, when I saw this yarn meter, whipped out my credit card and bought.

What do I plan to use it for? Who knows exactly?

Mostly I’ll be using it to wind off exactly 1/2 the yardage or wind know amounts off 1 lb cones or yarn. I often use yarn two strands at a time. I’ll probably also use it to wind off half the skein when knitting socks. That way, knitting toe up, I can make the socks exactly as long as possible using half the skein and still feel confident I’ve left enough yarn for the second sock.

So, this should come in handy.

Of course, the meter is only good if it’s accurate. So, I felt the need to test it.

I dug out my ball winder, slit the bottom of the toilet paper core, and slapped tp core onto the ball winder trapping some yarn between the tp “cone” and the ball winder. Then, I threaded the yarn through the yarn meter and onto the cone and wound like crazy.

This resulted in a very nice compact ball, which looks ohh so elegant on it’s toilet paper spool. Unfortunately, the value I measured was low, quite a bit low. I just didn’t believe the numbers. So, I called the friendly people at Nancy’s Knit Knacks.

It turns out to be important to wind at a fairly steady moderately quick rate and to keep some tension on the yarn. If you examine my set up, you’ll see I sort of held the yarn on the left, applying just a small amount of resistance. Then, I cranked the ball winder quickly.

Did the meter measure accurately now? Well I’ll let you decide!

I measured the yardage on a full 100 gram skein of Plymouth Galway. The label says 210 yards. I measured a few time, and averated. On average, the meter reported 195 yards. So, pretty close especially considering that I need to wind about a foot to get the measurement started. Of course, I don’t know if the 15 yard discrepancy is because the skein only holds 195 yards, or because my ball winder is off about 7%.

I also discussed this with the nice people at Nancy’s Knick Knacks; they told me that, depending on the color or yarn, they find some yarns tend to be a bit heavier than others. So, if the manufacturer sells by weight, the yardage of any individual color might differ from the yardage on the label by as much as 5%. So, that could account for most of the difference right there.

Naturally, I then measured the yardage on a full 100 gram skein of the Taiga yarn; I plan to use doubled when I knit my Knitting Olympics Sweater. The label says 250 m; I measured 260 m. So, very close — in fact, closer than the Plymouth yarn.

So, I’m pretty happy with my new gizmo!

Now, I need to go work on a sock while I watch the Superbowl. Thank heaven for knitting; it makes football bearable!