Playing a Game with Yarn

I've been playing with yarn & not in my usual way. I received yarn from my sister-n-law, K, while visiting their home back in January. After all of this time (~ 20 years) there is zero info regarding these yarns so I decided to do a bit of detective work. I really wanted to see exactly how much there is of each type & try to confirm the fiber content of each...as best as I could anyway.

First, I confirmed each sample's fiber content by doing a flame test using the information in this chart ...thankfully all the samples tested as wool...plus one seems to have silk as well. Next I used my handy dandy Salter scale to weigh out 10 grams of each yarn sample. Why 10 grams? Really just to make it easy to calculate the numbers. After weighing the 10 gram sample I measured to see how many inches were in a 10 gram sample size.

I also wanted to figure out the yarns' weight...lace or fingering, worsted or bulky...without doing the dreaded gauge swatch. So how did I do this? To start I also used a dowel & wrapped the yarn around it lightly so that each wrap touched the previous wrap. I did this for about 1 1/2 inches, measured out 1 inch and counted the number of times the yarn wrapped around to get the wraps per inch or wpi measurement. There are several charts available to reference, but I liked this one since it also included yarn totals along with type & gauge.

After using some simple math* I determined that I had the following:






A. Deep Emerald Green, 100% wool, fingering weight (15-16 wpi), cone of 2053 yards...actual yarn is a deeper, richer emerald green










B. Light Blue, 100% wool, bulky weight, (10 wpi), 520 yards, 2 skeins









C. Brown Tweedy, wool & silk, fingering, (15-16 wpi), 3010 yards, balls









D. Variegated Cream to Peach, 100% wool (think mohair), fingering weight (16-18 wpi), 1018 yards, balls





For the most part I have more than enough of Yarn A, Yarn C & Yarn D for most anything...a lacy cardi may be in the queue. I haven't settled on anything quite yet, but I do have a pattern for a lacy vest, Vintage Vest, that I may knit out of the emerald green. My favorite of the four yarns is the brown tweed, Yarn C...a wool with some silk slubs throughout. I need to start a search for a good pattern to knit. Suggestions?

My least favorite is Yarn D, the mohair...cream to peach in color...not a favorite color combo for me. Not too fond of lace weight mohair either, especially really hairy mohair. Knitting with it usually brings out quite a bit of frustration & annoyance when I need to correct knitting errors. Let's face it...there will be errors. Some kind of wrap? Mmmm...the Mosaic Maniacs are doing Wisp, but have I mentioned I don't care for hairy yarn? Think I can over dye this one too? I certainly have enough for most wraps.

The plan would be to over dye Yarn B (light blue) to a deeper shade of blue & use it in a felted bag since I really don't want a bulky light blue scarf or hat. The other problem I see with this one is that it has become somewhat felted over time so knitting may be interesting. I'm leaning towards using food color to dye the yarn a deeper color...or a multitude of colors. If it ever stops raining I'll give it a shot and see what I end up with. Seems I have a lot of ideas floating around the brain these days.

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*For example: let's use the numbers from the variegated yarn:

10 grams measured 980" ....980"/10 grams=98"/gram
Total yarn = 374 grams
98" x 374 grams = 36652"

36652" divided by 36"(1 yard)= 1018.1 yards