Once you've spun your yarn you'll need to wind that yarn off in to a skein. Most of the time you'll use a niddy noddy to do this. It's better to wind it off in to a skein, rather than straight in to a ball as you're going to want to wash your finished yarn. You can never judge the finished thickness or your yarn, or how balanced it is until it's been washed. Some skeins change considerably when they hit water!
When your skein is dry you want to know how much yarn you have. Niddy Noddy's are often sold as making a skein of a specific length such as 2 yards, or a 1.8m, or a whole multitude of other measurements, but you can't use that to work out the total amount of yarn you've spun and here's why!
My niddy noddy theoretically makes a skein with a circumference of 168cm. If you wrap just one strand around the arms, that's measurement you get. Every make of niddy noddy will vary. The ones I sell in the shop are approximately 1 yard (90cm), and 2 yard (180cm), but they're handmade and are sometimes a bit shorter, sometimes longer to make the most of the timber.
However, a niddy noddy that theoretically makes a skein of 2 yards won't actually produce a skein measuring exactly that for 2 main reasons. When you wrap yarn on to the niddy noddy it's under tension. When you take it off the yarn relaxes, and it's going to be slightly shorter. The yarn is going to change further when you wash it. Crimp will be activated, the plying and spinning twist will balance out and skeins often shrink further.
This skein was spun from combed tops using a short forward draw.
You might not be able to see clearly, but the skein length is now only 160cm. Remember my niddy noddy measures 168cm in theory, so each loop is 8cm shorter than it would be if I based the length on my niddy noddy size. If you've only got 50 strands that's 4m difference which isn't a great deal. If you've got 200 strands that's 16m, and given with handspun you often want to use every last metre in the pattern you pick, so those 16m might be quite important.
This skein show the difference even more. It's Ryeland fleece, spun with some grease left in, long draw.
It only measures 136cm, that means each strand is a massive 32cm shorter. That's going to have a huge impact on the yardage calculations. When it went in to a warm sink of hot water I visibly saw the skeins contract.
So the reliable method for calculating the length of your skein of yarn.
- Give your skein a wash and let it dry
- Take your skein and count how many strands you have
- Hold your skein stretched out between your hands (but not too tightly), and hold a tape measure along that length. That gives you the length of half your skein.
Take the number of strands, multiply it by 2, and multiply it by the measurement from your tape measure.
So for the Ryeland skein photographed above
95 strands
Half skein length = 68cm = 0.68m
95 x 2 x 0.68 = 129m
