Monday, September 09, 2013

How Many Skeins of Another Type of Yarn?

In the description of this blog I mentioned math. We'll start with an easy calculation, and below I even provide an Excel sheet where you can "plug and chug."

How many skeins do you need of another kind of yarn?

Q:
Say you find a pattern that you love and it calls for Cascade 220 (220 yards per skein).  The size you need requires 7 skeins.  You don't want to use Cascade 220. You want to use an alpaca blend instead.  The yarn you have in mind comes in skeins that contain 165 yards.  How many skeins of alpaca blend do you need?

A:   (220 x 7) / 165 =  9.33

      Round up... you will need 10 skeins.

Working it:

First take the numbers from the original pattern.
Multiply the amount of yards in one skein times the number of skeins required.
This gives you the amount of yards required in the original pattern.

Then divide the the amount yards required in the original pattern by the amount of yards in one skein of the yarn you want to use.

Here is a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet that I created.  How Many Skeins of Another Type Of Yarn  I'm still working out the kinks in this so if it doesn't work bear with me.  I have yet to figure out how to protect cells in the Google docs format so please only type in the three cells with the white backgrounds   I hope that this will be a useful tool for some.