Weighty Matters

I had prepared a post for today, but when I got online to publish it this morning, I saw the news coming out of Japan and wasn't really in the mood. I've decided tonight to queue up some posts since I'll be out of pocket for a little while, but I changed it up a bit. Stay tuned for a something a little extra at the end.

I have known for some time that weighing yarn is a useful way to estimate the length. Lots of people talk about it, and it was even a Car Talk Puzzler! But I'd never actually done it before because I didn't have a kitchen scale. Well, I finally got one a fewl months ago, and it's definitely been very handy.

For example, when I was finishing up my Snow Valley top, I saved the sleeves for last. I had already knit one and had to figure out if I had enough yarn left for the second sleeve. Before the scale, I would have just fretted a lot. But with the scale...



...I figured I'd be okay since my sleeve and the remaining yarn weighed exactly the same. Turns out, the scale did not lie. Whew! I was able to finish my top, but you'll have to wait for awhile before I can show you a modeled shot.

In the meantime, you might have noticed that you can't read the weight in the pictures. This is not a defect with the scale. It's because I decided to delete the reading and let you guess the number. The yarn is Alpaca Silk by Blue Sky Alpacas. Guess the weight shown on the scale (in grams), without going over, and you'll win 2 skeins of Alpaca Silk of your own (I'll give you a list of colors to choose from). If more than one person comes up with the right answer, the winner will be chosen randomly from among them. For each entrant who leaves a comment here with their answer, I'll add another $5 to my Red Cross donation. Make sure I have some way to contact you--email, Ravelry, or blog. Contest closes Friday, March 18th, at 10 PM Pacific Time.