Frequently Asked Questions

How much is a pound of yarn?

Well, a pound of yarn is a lot. If you're working with a worsted or DK weight yarn for example, a pound of yarn will be about 1,000 yards. If you're using a very bulky weight yarn it could be only about 400 yards, whereas if you're a sock knitter, a pound will probably yield about 2,000 yards because it is so much lighter. While a pound may be in the range you're going for if you're embarking on a sweater or a shawl, a pound is usually far more than you'll need for any small or medium-sized project.

To put it in perspective, you're probably used to seeing yarn in either small round balls, or more oblong skeins. These smaller balls are usually 50 grams -- which is about a tenth of a pound -- and the skeins are usually 100 grams, or a fifth of a pound.

As a baseline, if you're just shopping for yarn and don't have a specific project in mind, but want to play around with making your own combination and trying out different colors and fibers together, 8 oz. (half a pound) will give you plenty of yarn to work with, probably with some left over.

Yarnia's yarn isn't twisted. Will this affect my knitting?

No, this will not affect the way your finished product looks or acts. Technically, the strands of yarn on your custom cone are not "plied" together, meaning they're not wound onto the cone with a twist. This twist, that you're probably used to seeing in most commercial yarns, is what enables the single strands of yarn to stick together and appear to be one single strand.

Although we do not put any additional twist in the yarn as it is wound onto your cone, all of the plies you choose will be wound at an equal tension--what this does is not only ensure that each strand is planted on the cone at the same rate, but that it also comes off the cone at the same rate, as you're knitting or crocheting with it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that although the strands are not plied together, each of the input strands you choose is, in itself, plied. When yarn is spun, a twist is put in it to give it strength. All of the "ingredient" yarns you are choosing from are already single-ply (some are even double-ply to begin with). This, in addition to the tensioning, will leave you with a very strong yarn, with as much or as little elasticity as you want, depending on the type of fibers that make up the yarn.

Is this the same as knitting from two different skeins of yarn at once?

If the strands you've chosen are all very slippery--rayon boucle, for example--it may feel as though you're simply knitting with three separate strands, which perhaps you've tried if you've ever worked from a pattern that directs you to knit from two balls of yarn simultaneously.

Most fibers, however, have a bit of natural adhesion so that even though they are not twisted together, they'll tend to cling to each other as you're knitting, and should not feel too different from working with the twisted commercial yarn that you might be used to. If you are an extremely tight knitter, you may notice some "loopiness" in the yarn as it comes off the cone; if this happens, you can smooth out the yarn as you knit with it, pushing the loopiness further down the cone. You may need to cut and rejoin the yarn after a few hundred yards, but as you become more comfortable with the yarn and develop your own natural tension, this shouldn't be the case too often.