First, you need to calculate your weft requirements. I share how to do that here.

Next, estimate how much yarn you have on hand. I share how to do that here. (For this project, I used the McMorran yarn balance to estimate my yardage.)

​This narrowed down my options to two weft colors - magenta and a colorgrown beige cotton.
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Often, I've used my weaving software just as a way to plan out the structure. But most weaving software allows you to play with colors, and this is a great starting point!

Be sure to select the colors that are closest to the ones you actually plan to use! Sometimes this is enough to help me choose my colors.

If it's not, though, I save each potential color as a .jpg file to use in the next step.

I use the "mockups" feature in Canva, PlaceIt also has a lot of textile options. To use these, simply drag and drop your .jpg file of your drawdown onto the image, and it will add shapes and shadows to help you imagine what it will look like as a three-dimensional object.

I found these incredibly helpful in thinking about which weft to choose. The magenta weft (on the left) is bright and modern, while the beige weft (on the right) reminds me of a vintage hand-knotted rug. 

A zoom loom uses only 8 yards of yarn, and is a great way to see how colors combine in weaving. For this project, I used leftovers of warp from the warping process to audition my weft colors. Then I was able to place the samples on the sofa (where the finished blanket will go) and think about which one would work better.
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• Yarn wrapping is a great way to visualize how colors will look together in a warp.
• Use each project as part of your "sample library." If you frequently work with similar yarns, you'll know what sett you want to use right away. Then each project builds on the next!
• Learn color theory basics - this book is a great place to start!
• Make a gamp - this is a great way to sample color combinations, structures, and treadlings. Gamps often make really attractive wall hangings, too! 
• Buy other people's samples. Is this cheating? I don't think so! Many weaving guilds used to assemble notebooks of samples. These are often sold at weavers' estate sales, as well as on Facebook and Ravelry. Often, they scratch the itch of what a certain structure looks/feels like, or how a certain yarn might behave. If you can find them, they are well worth the investment!

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While I did jump through a bunch of hurdles to avoid extensive sampling, it's still an important part of the weaving process. 

Sampling is essential if you’re experimenting with a new yarn, structure, or technique. It’s especially important to wet-finish your samples so you know how big to make your piece on the loom. And if you have a lot of “what-if” questions, lots of samples with small variations are definitely the way to go!

My sett choices for this project were based on other projects with similar yarns and weave structures. In essence, other projects served as the samples for this one. 
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It's still in progress! Because of the number of treadles involved, I can only weave about 6 inches before needing to take a break and do some yoga. More to come soon!

Have you ever wanted to start a project but weren’t sure how much yarn you had? Maybe you were using leftovers from your stash, or maybe you were using a mystery yarn or handspun that didn’t even have a label!

You COULD wing it and hope for the best, but that’s a great way to lose at yarn chicken. It's always fun when you win, but if you get 90% of the way through a project and realize you don't have enough yarn and can't get more...well, I've been there, and it's a huge disappointment.

If you're not sure whether you have enough yarn, the best thing to do is to estimate! Luckily, there are quite a few different techniques available. In this post, I'll show you how to do each one, plus talk about the pros and cons of each. With all these techniques available, there's sure to be one that suits your preferences!

For most of these techniques, you'll need a digital scale and a calculator. The calculator on your phone will work just fine!

If you want to dive into some of the other techniques, you'll need a WPI tool, such as the one I sell, a McMorran Yarn Balance, a niddy noddy or warping board (choose what you already have!), and a measuring tape or ruler.

It might cost me a few sales, but I'll let you know right now - the WPI method is the least accurate way to estimate your yarn! WPI tools are great for many things, but estimating large quantities of yarn isn't one of them. 

The most accurate way to estimate your yardage is using the ball band. You're looking for two pieces of information: the weight, and the yardage or meterage. (My example only gives this information in Metric. If yours uses both, pick the one you are most likely to work with,)

Then you'll weigh your partially used ball to see how much you have left. 

Then you'll plug your known quantities into one of the formulas below to determine your remaining yardage.

To use the first formula, multiply the original length of the ball of yarn by the remaining weight, and the original weight by X, or the remaining length of yarn.

That gets me:
25x = 1034.25

Next, we need to isolate X, so we’ll divide 1034.25 by 25, and our answer is that we have 41.37 meters of yarn left.

Another way to calculate this is to divide the length by the weight.

105 meters/25 grams = 4.2 meters per gram.

Then I will multiply that by the weight of the yarn I have left:

4.2 meters/gram x 9.85 grams = 41.37 meters of yarn. 
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If I really need to know what that is in yards, I can convert it. 1 meter equals 1.0936 yards.

​1.0936 x 41.37 = 45.243 yards

Take your wraps per inch without stretching the yarn. Then compare that number to a YPP chart like the one above to get an estimated yards per pound. 

When I searched for yards per pound charts, I noticed that no two were the same. The most accurate one I found was Interweave's "Master Yarn Chart," which was developed for weavers. This is helpful if you know exactly what your yarn is, but it also points to one of the big failings of this method: there are just so many different kinds of fibers out there, all with different densities. 

Going back to my Shetland Spindrift example, this technique tells me there are 2600 (or more) yards per pound. The manufacturer's label gives a number that is 2,050 yards per pound, so that's way off!

Using the WPI estimate, however, I get 5.1 meters per gram, and 50.23  meters in this ball of yarn. Remember that we calculated 41.37 meters with the manufacturer's information, so that’s a difference of 8.86 meters, or a whopping 21% difference.

​This is the one method I never use, and it's why I don't sell a WPI tool with the intentions of calculating yardage. They're great for other things, like ensuring consistency in spinning, but they just don't come up to scratch here!
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The point of this technique is to wind your yarn into a new skein that is easy to measure. You can use a niddy noddy or warping board, but I would recommend against an umbrella swift, since the growing tension of a skein will distort the circumference.

The key to this technique is that you know the distance the yarn travels around your tool, and then you count the number of times the yarn went around it. Multiply the length by the number of loops to get the total length of your yarn. 
In this example, I wound the yarn around a 2-yard niddy noddy. I made 25 revolutions.

2 yards x 25 revolutions = 50 yards (45 meters)

This is 3.97 yards/3.63 meters longer or 10% MORE than our original estimate.

This number is pretty far off, even though the yarn is being wrapped around a fixed circumference. The reason for that is stretch.  Even being careful to not pull it too tight, the yarn did stretch quite a bit.

To account for this, be sure to take a measurement of the relaxed skein, after it's been taken off the skeinwinder. (Don't forget to tie your skein ties!) 

I determined that the total circumference of this skein in the relaxed state was 62 inches, or 1.72 yards

1.72 yards x 25 revolutions = 43.05 yards (39.2 meters)


This is 2.17 meters/2.37 yards, or 5% less than our original estimate, and a number I'd be very comfortable working with.

Running your yarn over a yardage counter is pretty straightforward. There are a variety out there, from inexpensive counters designed for fishing line, to this fancy one from the maker of the Electric Eel Spinning Wheel.

As with the niddy noddy technique, using a yarn counter risks stretching the yarn and distorting your measurement. To get the most accurate measurement possible, be sure to keep the yarn slack as it runs over the counter - don't pull it tight with your hands.

Meters all vary in how they give their readings. Mine gives its reading in tenths of yards. I got a reading of just under 46 meters, or 42 yards. That's only .63 meters, or 2% more than our original estimate, and by far the closest number to the original estimate!

While this is very accurate, I'd probably only use it on small-ish amounts of yarn. Unless you have access to industrial, it can become very tedious to measure very large amounts of yarn using this technique.

If none of the above methods appeal to you, you can always measure out a known quantity of yarn - 10 yards or meters, or even the amount of yarn it takes to knit one row. You'd then weigh that and run it through the original formulas. 

Since I was using a very accurate scale, I measured out 1 yard of yarn (I wish I'd done a meter instead!), and used the formula from the beginning to estimate that I had 39.15 meters of yarn. This was 2.22 meters, or 6% less than our original estimate.

Sorry, but I can't choose a winner here! The best method all comes down to your needs, and the equipment you have available to you.

Maybe you want the most accurate estimate possible. In that case, I'd highly recommend the ballband or yardage meter method. 

The WPI method was the least accurate, and I'd steer you away from that one.

This chart breaks down the extra tools needed (assuming you have a calculator and a ruler), plus the amount of math needed to perform the calculations. ​Over the years, I've amassed all the "extra" tools, but if I had to choose just one, it would be a digital scale. 

When it comes down to it, the two methods I use most often are:

• Using the ballband and the weight
• Using a McMorran Yarn Balance (especially for coned and handspun yarn)

I do use my yardage meter pretty frequently, but I'm more likely to use it to split a skein of yarn into two equal halves (say for sock knitting) than to try to pin down a definite yardage/meterage. 

This week I took a warp off my big loom. I’d started weaving the project in January, and now it’s June, so there was plenty of cleaning up to do! 

I do my best to vacuum around the loom, but when there's a warp on it, that's easier said than done! This time between warps was the perfect time to get under the loom to really clean - and to clean out my loom bench!

While I'm weaving, I do my best to take empty pirns and bobbins back to their home, but they do add up. Plus all those little bits of yarn! 

The best part of this project, though, is finding that Allen wrench. It belongs to a different loom, and I'd been looking for it for months! 

What I keep in my loom bench:

• Clover Tapestry Needle
• T-Pins
• Pinnable cloth measuring tape for measuring fabric on the loom (I made my own with twill tape and a sharpie)
• Measuring tape (this one is less prone to stretching, and I use it for centering the warp on the loom)
• Washi tape for taping drafts to the loom without leaving residue
• S-hooks in different sizes to weight loose threads, selvedges, and repair threads
• An adjustable wrench to tighten bolts on the loom, plus a screwdriver set 
• Scissors
• Loom ties to hold the beater in place while sleying the reed
• Calculator

Also in this video:

• Super sliders for moving furniture
• Dyson cordless vacuum (honestly not my favorite vacuum ever but it's the one I have)

Warping a loom with shafts mostly boils down to two methods: warping front-to-back, and warping back-to-front. Most of us warp the way we learned, without knowing why. 

The main differences are in the order in which the warp is put on the loom. In the front-to-back technique, the lease is held in the hand or a lease holder, then the warp is sleyed in the reed, drawn in through the heddles, tied on to the back beam, and wound on to the back beam. Finally, the ends are tied on to the front apron beam.

In back-to front warping, these steps are somewhat reversed. The warp goes onto a pair of lease sticks, then onto a raddle, which acts as a temporary spacer. Then, the warp is wound onto the back beam. Next the heddles are threaded in the pattern, and then the reed is sleyed. Finally, the ends are tied on to the front beam.

In America, it seems that a lot of weavers learn to warp with the front-to-back method. It’s definitely the way that I learned, but it turns out that back-to-front has a lot of advantages!

Back-to-front warping has some definite advantages. It keeps a warp under a more consistent tension, meaning there’s less opportunity for yarns to tangle. This makes it great for long warps. It’s good for delicate warp yarns, such as very fine yarns or single-ply yarns. That consistent tension is really helpful for other tricky warps, like ones with very high-twist yarn that would otherwise be prone to tangling. And lastly, it’s good for warps that are densely sett, such as repp weave.

With all the advantages of back-to-front warping, it’s a wonder that anyone uses front-to-back warping! However, there are a few key places where front-to-back warping really shines. A lot of weavers, myself included, like to make “mixed warps” that are “designed in the reed.” For these warps, I find that front-to-back warping is sort of lazy way to plan a warp, and I  use it often.

The other big advantage of front-to-back warping is when your loom (or your body) simply cannot accommodate back-to-front warping. This might be because your loom is pushed against a wall, and your back beam is not accessible, or the posture that you find yourself in is more comfortable for front-to-back warping.

​Whichever mode of warping you choose, ergonomics is key! Warping is a time-consuming part of the process, and it’s important to be kind to your body while you’re doing it.

In my own weaving practice, I've found that the loom itself has a big impact on how I choose to warp it. If I find myself hunched over, or otherwise uncomfortable during warping, I'm less likely to want to warp that way! In the following video, I share five different looms and the way that I prefer to warp each one.

A skein* of yarn is made by wrapping the yarn many times around some sort of measuring device – a swift, a niddy-noddy, or even a chair.

In this state, it’s easy to tangle the yarn. So why is yarn often sold this way?

First of all, this is the best way to wash and dye yarn. If the yarn were wound into a ball, then soap, water, or dye wouldn’t be able to penetrate all the way to the center. Plus, a ball could easily unravel while it’s wet, causing additional tangles.

Second, measuring yarn in a skein is pretty simple – if you know the diameter of the skein, you’ll simply multiply that by the number of times the yarn goes around to get the total yardage.

Lastly, yarn that’s wound into a tight ball can actually stretch out over time, leading to inconsistencies in yarn quality across the ball. Keeping it in the skein until you’re ready to use it can prevent this from happening.

​Since these are all great reasons to use skeins, how can we prevent them from getting tangled?

Usually, tangles boil down to one of four problems:

1. Winding a ball without a swift or other device to keep the skein in order. 
2. Not enough ties, or the ties are improperly placed.
3. Yarn was bunched up or shifted around during wet-finishing or dyeing.
4. Yarn was improperly placed on the swift, or ties untied incorrectly.

If you don't have a swift, you can use the next-best thing: the back of a chair. Or get a patient loved one to hold out their hands and act as a swift for you. 

A bigger problem is if the skein didn't have enough ties in the first place. One or more pieces of yarn will flop over to the other side of the skein where they don't belong. You put the skein on the swift, but somehow it's tangled! It's really hard to spot the problem if you don't know what you're looking for. 

This can still happen if you have plenty of ties, but the ties are improperly spaced. The goal is to have all the ties equidistant from each other to prevent the tangles from happening. 

Tangles can happen when the yarn is floating around in water during dyeing or wet-finishing, especially if you're working in batches of multiple skeins. Wet yarn moves much more freely in water, and is easy to tangle at this point. 

If you finish your yarn with whacking, thwacking, or menacing, there are further opportunities for the yarn to tangle. Sometimes it's not really tangled, but becomes bunched up around a tie. This leads to sticky spots that feel like tangles when you're winding a ball or re-skeining the yarn. Tugging the skein to re-shape it helps with this problem.

How you handle the yarn as you begin to wind your ball matters too. Sometimes a skein of yarn goes onto the swift with a twist. This makes it harder to unspool the skein and leads to a tangled feeling. This is because the yarn is having to travel in a spiral motion, and may be snagging on some other part of the skein. 

Badly removed ties can also create the feeling of tangles. If they're dragged down so that the yarn moves out of position too much, this can create some snags that compound on themselves as you wind your ball. ​

You want to make sure that the ends of the yarn are secured in these ties - otherwise, you will spend all your time hunting for those ends later on!

​If you're washing your yarn (for example, when wet-finishing handspun) or dyeing it, how you handle your yarn when it's wet is also important. You should never pick up the skein by a single strand of yarn. Instead, pick up by the ties to make sure you're getting the whole skein at once. If the yarn is soaking wet, be sure to support the extra weight so it doesn't stretch out.

When a skein of yarn is submerged in water, the strands are going to float more freely - just like how your hair fans out when you're underwater. If you have multiple skeins in the same water container, this can easily lead to strands getting caught on each other. When this happens, don't keep pulling it up, as this will make the tangle worse. Instead, poke around to try and find what it's snagged on, release it, and then lift by the ties. 

Once you've finished with dyeing or washing, find the ties, and re-form the shape of the skein. A gentle tug will get things re-aligned. Don't pull too hard, as most yarns are more fragile when wet. 

If you plan to sell your yarn, it's considered a best practice to re-skein it after wet-finishing or dyeing. This will help get any possible tangles smoothed out, and leads to happier customers.

Before re-skeining your yarn or winding it onto a ball, be sure to place it onto a swift or other fixed object to keep it in a continuous loop. Be sure it goes on straight - any twist in the loop will create a feeling of tangles! 
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When you untie your skein ties to wind the yarn into a ball, be sure to remove the ties gently. Pay close attention to the ends of the yarn. If you drag them through the skein, you're going to change its position and risk creating a tangle. 

Sometimes if a skein starts out feeling tangly, it's best to wind the ball from the other end. This works more often than you might expect! 

Often, gentle strumming of a skein and slightly opening out the strands in a tangly area will release a simple snag. 

If you have a single strand that jumped into the wrong side of the loop, be sure to keep it from wrapping around the shaft of your swift. It may be possible to keep going!

​But if you do end up with massive tangles, it's not the end of the world. Tangles often look worse than they really are, and there are a few things you can do to keep from making them worse. 

Most importantly, be patient and go slowly. Your skein didn't start as a knot - all you have is a bunch of strands that have gotten unruly. If you try to go too fast, and pull to tight, you'll create a knot that may be difficult to untie.

​*technically what I’m talking about is called a “hank.” But since it’s often referred to as a skein, I refer to it as such throughout this article. Because…you know, SEO and how the Internet finds things.