Playing Yarn Chicken

Have you heard that term before? It’s a game a lot of us dedicated yarnies play, especially when we are working from our stash and may be cutting it close for having enough yarn to finish a project. As a designer I play this game a lot. Partly because I’m always trying to get the most from the yarn I am using for a design. This week though, I was just being silly.

I thought it would be fun to use up some of the orphan balls of yarn in my stash and make another “2 by 2 Cowl”. I especially wanted to try it in one of the long color changing yarns, and with a fiber content that would be more comfortable to wear with the warmer temperatures. Currently I am wondering about those warmer temperatures since we have been experiencing a record breaking late  May snow storm with below freezing temperatures.

I had come across a ball of yarn that I had lost the label to, but I loved the colors and it felt like it had quite a bit of cotton in it. I was pretty sure I had purchased the yarn at the Longmont Yarn Shoppe, so I brought it in with me when I went there this Wednesday for Casual Crochet.

Jane, the lovely manager at LYS, was able to tell me the yarn right away. It was Plymouth Yarn Company’s “Kudo” a blend of 55% Cotton/40% Rayon/5% Silk {sadly this yarn is discontinued now}. The original weight of this skein according to Ravelry is 100g and 198 yards. I must have used a little bit of it though, my skein was 95g. That number is going to be very important. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the skein before I started crocheting my new cowl.

I started my cowl while at the Casual Crochet meeting. By the time I was back home where I could weigh it, I had worked 9 rounds off the foundation. According to my scale I had used 50g of my yarn. I decided I had better weigh my remaining yarn too, just to be on the safe side. I had 45g left to work with still.

Now it was time for a little math. 95g of yarn to start with, 47.5g is half the ball. That means I had used more than half the ball of yarn to get to the end of 9 rounds.

95g divided by 50g = 1.9 x 9 rounds = 17.1 rounds. That means I have enough yarn for 8 more rounds.

I want to be extra sure, so I crocheted another round, then weighed my cowl again. 55g this time. That leads me to the conclusion that it takes 5g of yarn for each round. More math.

9 x 5 = 45 so 50 – 45 = 5g, which means my foundation round took only 5g of yarn. Making an assumption, my finishing round will take 5g of yarn.

95 divided by 5 = 19. 19 – 10 = 9 more rounds.

After all that math I decided that I should be able to work 17 total rounds in the stitch pattern for the body of the cowl, then one more round for the finishing edge.

When I got to the end of Round 15 I thought about stopping. I liked the width of the cowl and with the edging it would be a nice size for spring/summer wear. I took some photos comparing it to the first sample I had crocheted.

One of the fun thing about working with a long color changing yarn was the way it was striping in this pattern. It is also good for being able to see that you are working the “join and turn” part of the pattern correctly.

I decided to keep going to see how my game of yarn chicken would turn out. At the end of Round 16 I weighed my remaining yarn. I had 11 grams of yarn left, things were looking good.

Then this happened. I was just short of enough yardage to finish. Sigh I pulled it out to the end of Round 16 and worked my finishing round.

I’m actually very happy with how the cowl came out. I wasn’t too thrilled with the mustardy yellow being the finishing color, so removing 1 round actually solved that issue. I really love the striping effect of the color changing yarn in this design. I thought the changes at the join might be too harsh, but I don’t mind them at all.

The question now is, where did I go wrong with my math? I actually don’t think it was my math, it was my tension as I was crocheting. The blend in this yarn has absolutely no “give” to it at all, so as I was working the last half of my project my gauge got a bit loose. It was just enough that it made me use more yarn in my final rounds.

The looser finishing edge actually works out. I like the slight flaring that the cowl has. When it is worn with the foundation round at the top, the slightly larger edging round gives it a graceful fit across the shoulders. If I was working this cowl for a design sample I might be more concerned and would pull it out to rework the loose rows. Instead, this was just for my own entertainment, and will probably be added to my wardrobe.

In my opinion the most important part of playing yarn chicken is a willingness to re-imagine the final project. By eliminating a few rounds I made a beautiful cowl with the yarn I had picked, even though yardage and weight were quite different from the yarn I originally used in my design.

How about you dear readers, have you ever played “yarn chicken” with a project? Hopefully you were happy with your finished project once the race was over.