Well, that's interesting.

With all the busy Easter prep (all the kids and my grandkids came for Easter) about the only thing I could focus on knitting was the very simple striped cowl knitting.

But I came across something interesting.

I had two packs of minis and a skein of sock yarn that were very close to equal yardage.  I figured that if the skein of sock yarn and the minis were close to the same length, by the time I was done the stripes, I would also be almost done the sock yarn. 

And then this.

All the purples are done and yet I have a significant ball of grey left.  One of two things is going on here.  The gray is either a lot longer than I thought, or the minis were shorter.  I am voting for the minis being shorter.  

I do recall that when I first picked the yarns, that the cowl would have a long stretch of plain, and that this is what I wanted.  I am positive that I asked how much yarn there was in a pack and I am certain she told me, only I have no memory of what that number was.  I decided it was 240 yards from the information I found on Ravelry. 

I did buy these at a special event, at Interweaves now long gone Knitlab.  It is completely natural for a vendor to have something special for an event like that and for this, I will assume that the skeins were slightly smaller than what she winds off for minis now.  

That was almost 4 years ago and it is completely possible that there is now a more common mini length where at the time, the standard was shorter.  Who knows really.  The land of knitting is mystical and anything is possible.  

So, just how much yarn did my mini packs contain?

Well, each set of 3 stripes has seven rows for a total of 21 rows per colour and the scarf is 8 inches wide , therefore each row is 16 inches wide across the stitches. 21 rows of 16 inches each is approximately 336 inches per colour or 28 yards.  I have a couple feet of each colour left and when I add that in, I suspect that each colour was originally 30 yards or very close to it.  So each of my colour packs had 180 yards, not the 240 yards I originally said I had. I had 2 graduated sets of yarn so I had a total of 360 yards of graduated colours.  

My skein of the gray was 400 yards.  It still seems like I have a pretty large ball of yarn left for a difference of 40 yards.  Maybe the purples are 160 yards?  Maybe my measuring is off, or my math.  I don't know.  

In any case, I had always planned to knit till the yarn was gone.  So I am.

 

Whatever there was, I am pretty darn ok with it.  It is what I was looking for and I remain really pleased with it!  Good to go.