Yarn on a Cone: A Word of Caution

I am a huge fan of buying yarn on cones to knit with. The yardage is vast; there’s no winding; there are fewer ends to weave in; and (sometimes) it’s cheaper.

Plus, I love how cones look all lined up on my shelf. It makes me feel like a fancy fiber artist.

Before you succumb to the siren song of coned yarn, there are things you should know. Coned yarn was made for weavers or machine knitters, not hand knitters.

Frequently, coned yarns feel and act differently from a skeined yarn, even if they are the same yarn, like the Harrisville Highland in Adobe shown above. I am completely swooning. There may be a sweater in my future.

You can see the difference between the two in this picture.

The coned yarn (top) still has spinning oils in it. It feels stiffer, looks a little compacted, and may feel sticky. Spinning oils are applied to fiber at a mill to help the fiber-to-yarn process go smoother. The oil helps the fiber glide through the spinning machines.

I knew they would be different, but I was surprised how much. The skeined yarn (bottom) feels squishy and light, and is a bit fuzzy.

At most mills, yarn on a cone is washed to release the spinning oils before it’s wound into skeins.

Harrisville Highland is one of my go-to basic yarns. It’s not buttery soft. I usually wear a shirt under my Highland sweater and am just fine. It’s a woolen spun, tweed yarn that comes in 64 (!) colors at a great price.

I have a sweater I still wear constantly that is older than my kids. I think I made it in 1995.

It’s knit from a cousin yarn of Highland that I believe is discontinued. It was Highland with tweed flecks.

To take this photo I had to grab the sweater out of the back seat of my car, where it seems to live from fall through winter, just in case I need another layer. I do not treat this sweater with the care I show some of my others but look how it has held up.

Knitting with yarn from a skein

I knit both of these swatches into a fabric that was pleasing to me. The skeined yarn (above) is 4.5 stitches to the inch, after wet blocking.

Now the cone yarn

The unfinished yarn swatch is on top; the finished yarn swatch on the bottom.

I chose my needle size for the cone yarn swatch by looking at the size of the yarn. I used a needle two sizes smaller than my first swatch and got 5 stitches to the inch before I wet blocked it.

Unfinished it felt fine. The gauge was good and worthy of a sweater. Any not-so-greatness was due to the firmness of the yarn from the spinning oil.

When I wet blocked it, the yarn swelled to 4.5 stitches per inch, but since it was knitted on smaller needles, it has the consistency of cardboard. It would not be a comfy sweater with this hand. It could stand up and run away on its own like the gingerbread man.

This is the cautionary tale of coned yarn. If you knit with it, you have to plan for a gauge change when the oil is washed out.

Left to right: Highland from a skein, off of the cone, from the cone after a soak in wool wash. The change is pretty incredible.

The change is extra dramatic because Highland is a woolen spun yarn. It’s light and lofty. Since the fibers in woolen spun yarns are less compressed in the spinning, there is more air in the structure of the yarn giving it room to puff when finished.

If you knit a coned yarn to your gauge without swatching and blocking, it could ruin your day. It most certainly will change your gauge.

What to do?

The top swatch is from a skein and the bottom is from the cone wound, washed, and caked. The gauge is the same on the same sized needles.

You can approach cone yarn in a couple of ways. You can skein the yarn from the cone, give it a soak in wool wash, let it dry, and wind it into a cake.

The top swatch is unfinished cone yarn knit on the project needles. The gauge is 4 stitches to an inch. The bottom swatch is a washed version of cone yarn on project needles, 4.5 stitches to an inch.

If that seems like a lot of extra work and goes against the fewer ends to weave in part of cone yarn knitting, you can do a double swatch.

Wash and swatch just enough yarn to determine your gauge and needle size. Then using the same size needles and stitch count, swatch with the cone yarn. This way you can see and feel the difference between the two.

Of course, you could just jump into knitting your sweater once you know the needle size you need after knitting with washed yarn—but I like having that unwashed safety swatch.

Without it I would convince myself something is wrong and likely fiddle with my knitting until I actually make it wrong, or put my knitting into time out indefinitely.

Having both swatches at hand as a reference while I work on my project lets me know all is well. I know I need that reminder right now.

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