Now, let’s see a show of hands. How many of you have started knitting an afghan, or a scarf, and then ran out of yarn before you were finished with your project? Come on now, let’s see those hands. Well, this has happened to me more times then I like to admit. I finally came up with a solution that will probably have you saying, “well duh…why didn’t I think of that!” It’s a super easy way to calculate yarn needed to finish your afghan! In fact, I used this technique when knitting my Rainbows & Butterflies Afghan and my Honeymoon Afghan.
If you look in your kitchen, you’ll find the tool you need.
Be ready to shake your head…….you need your kitchen scale! Ideally a digital one. Here’s mine, which I admit was not purchased for cooking but for crafting!
Now, you probably think I’m crazy but I’m not. Trust me. This little tip is so easy, I’m almost ashamed to share it. Anyway, what you want to do first is turn on your scale and weigh your brand new skein of yarn. Mine weighs 3.6 oz. Write this down somewhere safe….
Come on now, don’t write it on the back of an old receipt that will get lost. I’d write this down in a notebook somewhere.
Now, look at your pattern. If it begins by having you cast on a number of stitches and then knitting so many rows for your border, that’s awesome! Why? Well, because that’s how much yarn you are going to need for the final steps of your afghan.
So, let’s do this first piece of knitting next. Cast on your stitches and knit those few border rows….it’s probably 4 or 6 rows. Now stop knitting.
At this point, grab your scale again and weigh the remainder of this first skein of yarn. Here, mine weighs 2.5 ounces
Okay, my skein started off weighing 3.6 oz and after knitting the initial boarder, I have 2.5 oz left. So to calculate yarn needed to keep in reserve for my final border is just 3.6 – 2.5 or 1.1 oz.
Yes, just follow your afghan pattern until you have 1.1 oz (or whatever amount of yarn you calculated for your final border), then knit the border and cast off.
See how easy this is? You’ll never get to the end of your project and need only enough yarn for say 10 more stitches!
Gone are the headaches you get when you run out of yarn 10 stitches before the end!
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