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How to Stretch a Special Yarn: Winning at Yarn Chicken
When you only have a few skeins of a yarn you treasure, you want to make every yard count. Here are 7 ways to make sure you make the best use of it.
When Norah Gaughan visited Wing and a Prayer Farm in 2023, she fell in love with the sheep and their yarn. She chose a few skeins of a longwool blend called Taconic Twist, naturally dyed with onion skin, marigold, and indigo to a sage hue. She envisioned a sweater for this yarn, a richly textured cardigan. But with less than 1,500 yards of fine-gauge yarn, what could she make?
You might think that Wing and a Prayer Farm makes a lot of yarn. After all, shepherd Tammy White keeps about 75 sheep, and she blends in some wool purchased from other flocks to add qualities she desires to make up some of her yarns. But the farm raises as many as eight breeds of sheep, from finewools (Cormo and Merino) to longwools (Teeswater and Wensleydale), plus their very special Valais Blacknose sheep, so Tammy chooses wool from just a few sheep in each yarn. In all, Wing and a Prayer produces about a dozen different yarns, which Tammy dyes herself using plants from the farm’s dye garden. The resulting small-batch skeins are, if not one of a kind, at least limited-edition.
Several of Norah’s design choices in the Wee Cardi are yarn-thrifty as well as stylish. If you find yourself with barely enough yarn for your project, here are five ways of winning yarn chicken on garments, plus two specifically for scarves and wraps.
Take It from the Top
During her years as a design director and knitwear designer for national brands, Norah mostly worked garments in pieces from the bottom up, which aren’t easily adjustable on the fly—once the garment is begun, there are few places to save a few yards here or there. For the Wee Cardi, Norah worked from the shoulders down for the back and front, then picked up stitches to work the sleeves from the armhole down. If yarn is running low, you can skip a couple of rounds of ribbing or shorten the sleeves by an inch.
The Wee Cardi starts at the shoulder and is worked down for the back and front, making the length adjustable.
When Norah Gaughan visited Wing and a Prayer Farm in 2023, she fell in love with the sheep and their yarn. She chose a few skeins of a longwool blend called Taconic Twist, naturally dyed with onion skin, marigold, and indigo to a sage hue. She envisioned a sweater for this yarn, a richly textured cardigan. But with less than 1,500 yards of fine-gauge yarn, what could she make?
You might think that Wing and a Prayer Farm makes a lot of yarn. After all, shepherd Tammy White keeps about 75 sheep, and she blends in some wool purchased from other flocks to add qualities she desires to make up some of her yarns. But the farm raises as many as eight breeds of sheep, from finewools (Cormo and Merino) to longwools (Teeswater and Wensleydale), plus their very special Valais Blacknose sheep, so Tammy chooses wool from just a few sheep in each yarn. In all, Wing and a Prayer produces about a dozen different yarns, which Tammy dyes herself using plants from the farm’s dye garden. The resulting small-batch skeins are, if not one of a kind, at least limited-edition.
Several of Norah’s design choices in the Wee Cardi are yarn-thrifty as well as stylish. If you find yourself with barely enough yarn for your project, here are five ways of winning yarn chicken on garments, plus two specifically for scarves and wraps.
Take It from the Top
During her years as a design director and knitwear designer for national brands, Norah mostly worked garments in pieces from the bottom up, which aren’t easily adjustable on the fly—once the garment is begun, there are few places to save a few yards here or there. For the Wee Cardi, Norah worked from the shoulders down for the back and front, then picked up stitches to work the sleeves from the armhole down. If yarn is running low, you can skip a couple of rounds of ribbing or shorten the sleeves by an inch.
The Wee Cardi starts at the shoulder and is worked down for the back and front, making the length adjustable.
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Keep It Cropped
The biggest yarn-conserving choice of the Wee Cardi is the length: the fashion for waist-length sweaters is also a benefit when you’re trying to stretch a skein. Choose a pattern that hits at waist height or above to save yardage. (Another option: choose short sleeves, or skip sleeves altogether and embrace the vest/slipover trend.)
Choose Textures Carefully
One bold move Norah made in the Wee Cardi was to choose knit/purl patterns and cables as the fabric of her cardigan. The cable crosses and textured ribbing create warm air pockets, but they also use extra yarn by drawing in length and width. If you’re really limited in yardage, look for a design in stockinette stitch or especially lace.
Annie Modesitt’s Vest for the Cricket Match includes two accent colors in the ribbed edging at the armhole and neck—which she prepared for by including stripes in the ribbing of the lower edge. Photo by Joe Hancock
Place Another Color
It can be tempting, when you’re running out of your main color, to just join another color where you run out and keep going. Occasionally that kind of color-blocking can look cool and intentional, but more often, it looks like you ran out of yarn. Start introducing the second (or third) color early, with a few stripes in the body that you can match in the sleeves, or work a few rows in the ribbing on the lower edge if you’ll be adding them in the neck and sleeve edging.
Leave It Live
If you’re short on yarn, provisional cast-ons and waste-yarn stitch holders are your friends. If you’re working from the bottom up, look for patterns where the edging or ribbing doesn’t flow into the body or sleeve pattern, and cast on the lower edge provisionally. When you see how much yarn you’ll have, you can work the edging or extend the body or sleeves as long as you like. If you're working from the top down, slip your stitches onto a holder (or scrap yarn, to try it on), work the remaining essential parts of the garment, and come back to the held stitches when you know how much yarn is left. It can also help in trying to make a scarf or shawl as long as you can, a strategy I used in knitting the Grand Picot Chunky Scarf.
Leaving stitches on hold is a good strategy if you might need to add another color—you can match the sleeves or trim to the body. The provisional cast-on trick only works for stockinette stitch, though, or patterns that don’t need to line up, because stitches worked in the opposite direction will be a half-stitch offset—and you can’t ravel texture patterns from the opposite direction.
Shawl Strategy: Weigh Your Options
The Pyrope Shawlette is worked from end to end, with an expanding garter-stitch panel and lace edging worked in the same direction. To be sure you have enough yarn to knit the second half, weigh your yarn and reserve half for the decrease portion, then knit as far as you can with the increase portion. If you don’t have a scale handy and your yarn is in skeins or hanks, count the number of strands in the skein and wind off half in reserve.
Kate’s Simple and Beautiful Shawl was designed to take advantage of whatever quantity of yarn you have on hand. Photo by Kate Larson
Shawl Strategy: Just Keep Knitting
Some shawls can just grow and grow as long as you have yarn to knit! Melvenea Hodges’s Chameleon Shawl is worked down from the cast-on in two triangles, ending when you have just enough yarn to knit the edging. Kate’s Simple and Beautiful Shawl adds stitches in a garter-stitch section as long as you like, then uses the remaining yarn for an applied lace edging bind-off (similar to the Pyrope Shawlette, but asymmetrical). This strategy does require you to leave some yarn for the final edging or bind-off, so it’s not appropriate when you really want to use every inch.
A Final Note: When to Give In
If you have finished a whole garment and are racing to finish the final bind-off, or if you have your heart set on making a particular pattern with a particular yarn, then these ideas may help you finish those last few stitches. If you can help it, though, try to avoid that nail-biting race to the finish. (I can’t be the only person who knits faster when the ball gets smaller . . .) Purchase a bit of yarn insurance if you can, choose a pattern that you have plenty of yarn for, and remember that having a ball of yarn left over to add to your stash is just fine if you have the finished object you were dreaming of.
