Monday, April 23, 2007

Yarn help....

I have my patterns picked....I am going to do the soft waves on page 19 of Jan Eaton's book and storm clouds on page 47. How do I know how much yarn I need? I want to go and get this today, so any help would be greatly appreciated. On the soft waves It just says 12+3 and on storm clouds it says 17+3. Both of these will be adult size blankets.

THanks for any help!

3 comments:

Laugh.Love.Knit said...

Well it all depends on the yarn you use, along with the hook. If you know the type of yarn you are wanting to get... say worsted. And have some worsted laying around.. try this...

Work up a sample, do the length your wanting to do. Say 250 chains *or whatever needed for the pattern* do your starting chain. Then use a black marker and mark the yarn at the end of the chain... follow the pattern and mark yarn again at end of row. Do this for 3 rows if possible. Then frog the sample. *frog = to tear out/ rip out*

Match up the marks on the yarn. It will be pretty long...Do it so that the mark made at the start of one row matches with the start of the next. The same with the ends of rows. Then measure how long it is in between these marks. Don't worry about pulling it exactly smooth... some bumps in the yarn are ok... it will give you a bit of an allowance.

Once you have this length... say 2 yars.. multiply that by the number of rows you want the blanket to be.

Example: 2 yards per row * 100 (50 stripes, 2 rows per stripe) you would need 200 yards of yarn at least to make the blanket. Then divide that between the number of colors you want in the blanket.

Just looking at the nearest skein of mine... Caron Simply soft has 315 yards per skein. So for those numbers... 1 of each color would be plenty with extras left over.

But an adult size blanket will probably use up 3-4 yards *depending on the hook* per row.. then times that by the rows again.. and you'll get a much larger number.. and probably need 10+ skeins.

Adrienne said...

wow. ok. I am planning on using hte caron simply soft. lol but i have to get the yarn....I do have hooks already but I only have 6, 8, and 9 or g, H, and I....hmmm lol

Laugh.Love.Knit said...

Sorry for such a long comment.. I get a bit windy sometimes. If your using the Simple Soft yarn... plan on getting 2 or 3 of each color you plan on using. I'm using a G (6/4.25 mm) hook and it's making good stitches.