Scale for Weighing Yarn

A reader asked the other day about the scale I use for weighing yarn. First, I find it very helpful to weigh yarn . . and weigh it often during the project. 

• It’s important to know how much yarn you’re starting with. The fact that the band says 100 grams doesn’t always mean it’s 100 grams.
• With a little math, once you’re done with the project, you can weigh what’s leftover and quickly determine how much yarn you’ve used.
• More importantly, if you’re halfway through the project and you’ve used 65% of your yarn, you may want to get creative and figure out how to incorporate a totally different yarn or order more yarn. It’s never a good idea to wait til you’re near the end of the project because IF you have to order more yarn, the dye lot may be different and it would work much better to do some alternating skeins through a portion of the project and not wait til the end and add those last few rows with a yarn that’s either a good bit lighter or darker.

This little Ozeri scale is my kitchen scale. I also keep one in the sewing room so that if I’m having to split a skein into two balls, I can weigh them as I’m winding to be sure I’m getting fairly equal balls. What I do is wind the entire skein into a ball. Weigh the ball, divide that by 2 . . say it’s 104 grams. I leave the entire ball on the scale and begin winding a 2nd ball from it and continue winding the second ball until the first ball weighs 52 grams. Then I wind the remaining half into another ball just to keep stripe sequence and yarn twist going the same direction.

I like the Ozeri. It works fine and for $13, I don’t hesitate to recommend it as a yarn or kitchen scale. But, I LOVE this little scale for the yarn scale.

This little scale is $10 and it comes in a little plastic case. 

I love that it has the little box so I can stick it in my knitting bag. I love that the little “arm” that has the digital info pops out and then snaps back in so it’s protected when I have it in my knitting bag or sitting on the floor while I’m knitting.

Also, if I’m wanting to weigh several small balls of yarn (or tomatoes or anything that wants to roll around), I can use either the top or the bottom of the protective box, place it on top of the scale, hit tare, then add whatever I’m wanting to weigh.

Both scales seem to be accurate and easy to use and I would recommend both but for the reasons mentioned, the little square one is my favorite for knitting purposes.