Measuring and Documenting Yarn

Whelp! Another spinning project finished!

I'm calling this "Cotton Candy Confetti Yarn"

I started planning this yarn way back in May 2014, when I first bought the wool at Maryland Sheep and Wool, but I started it on my spindle just this May. I mostly like how it turned out, but the colored bits make it more obvious that the wool had a bit of a golden tint (lovely in the lock, less so when mixed with pink and blue).

I don't have a project in mind for it yet, but I thought I would share some tips on measuring and documenting spinning projects - and mystery items in the stash that have lost their labels.

First, the platform. A lot of people tie samples of their handspun to index cards, or tape them in notebooks. The advantage of this is that you get to look back at your yarn with all five senses if you want (not sure why you would want to taste your yarn, but you could). I use Ravelry to keep track of my projects, because I find that a lot easier, but it would be nice if I could feel the softness or tension of the yarn that I made.

That said, if you don't have a sample with your description, a picture is pretty crucial. I spend a lot of time on my computer adjusting the colors of my photos to try to make it look close to how the yarn actually looks. You may have noticed that I often include a coin in my pictures, to give a sense of scale, as well.

After you have a picture or a sample, the next thing to include in your documentation is your fiber source. If you are dealing with handspun on Ravelry, you can link directly to a fiber page, hopefully with pictures and details on breed or fiber-mix. On a physical sample card, you can include a small sample of the fiber along with the yarn. Be as detailed as you can about what state the fiber was in when you got it (in the grease? mill-carded into roving?) and as much as you know about the animal it came from. If it is mystery fiber, you can always try a burn test, though the results are not that useful for blends.

I unfortunately didn't record much info about the colored locks in the cotton-candy yarn: I know they were a soft longwool or mohair, and I bought them as dyed locks - I don't even know from which booth at MD S&W. But, since that is what I have, that is what I recorded.

Assorted dyed locks - unknown breed

On the other hand, I have recorded both the breed and source for the white fiber. I don't know the name of the individual sheep, or the full parentage, but, since I was not thinking of buying a fleece, it is not so important.

Undyed, washed, Lincoln-Crossbreed locks; from Barnswallow Fibers and Yarns.

After indicating the method of fiber preparation (I spun from picked locks with no further prep by me) and any particular spinning methods used (corespinning, navajo-ply, etc), it is time to measure the yarn.

First, weigh it. I general record in ounces because the fiber is sold that way in the US, but the units don't matter, as long as you indicate which ones you used - 4 ounces is very different from 4 grams.

4.75 ounces of yarn

This weight can be useful later, in checking how much you have used up, and whether you will have enough.

Next, you want the amount of yarn in length. Always check this after you have wet-finished the yarn, as that may shrink it a bit. Stretch out your skein and use measuring tape to get the length of one round, count the rounds, and multiply.

Always re-measure the skein after washing, even if you know the length of your niddy-noddy.

My skein was 55 inches around, and there were 181 wraps, which equals 9,927 inches or 277 yards. Since you have the weight and the length, you can calculate the grist (in yards per pound) but I don't find it a particularly helpful number.

Finally, I calculate the "weight" or width of the yarn, in wraps per inch (WPI). This is not super-accurate, because different people wrap loosely or tightly, but the idea is that you wrap your yarn around a ruler and see how many "wraps" there are to the inch. The yarn shouldn't be stretched, and it shouldn't be packed in too much either.

13 WPI

Unfortunately, I haven't seen a lot of agreement matching WPI to weight. Depending on the source, 13 WPI is either a heavy fingering or DK.

Although I don't, twist angle is another possible measurement - just use a protractor.