Guest Author - Christine Dux
Cutting your own yarn is easy and will give you more choices for colors, lengths, yarn weights and fibers than purchasing pre-cut yarn.
Try latch hooking different lengths of yarn to determine the size you will be cutting your yarn. Pre-cut pieces normally come in 2 ½ lengths, but your strips can be longer or shorter. Its your design you decide!
Cut out a piece of cardboard (the back of a notebook works well). It should be about 6 long and the width will equal the length you have selected for each piece of yarn. Example: If you decided that the length of each piece of yarn will be 2 ½, the size of the cardboard would be cut to 6X 2 ½.
Fold the cardboard in ½ the long way and place a pencil inside along the crease.
Wrap yarn around the cardboard in a single layer. Pulling the yarn too tightly around the cardboard will stretch the yarn and create shorter pieces. Before cutting all of your yarn, experiment with wrapping a few strands of yarn and cutting to make sure you will be getting the length you want.
Place scissors in the open side of the cardboard and cut.
How much yarn will you need?
One piece will be needed for each hole. To calculate the amount of yarn needed:
Determine the length of each piece.
Calculate how many pieces you can get from each yard of yarn. Divide 36 by the length of each piece of yarn. Example: If each piece will be 2 ½ long: 36/2.5 = 14.4. This tells us that each yard of yarn can be cut into approximately 14 pieces.
Determine how many holes will need to be hooked. This can be done by counting the holes or by multiplying the number of holes in the width by the number of holes in the length. Example: If you are covering an area that is 16 holes wide by 30 holes long: 16*30 = 480. This tells us that the 16X30 area has 480 holes.
Divide the number of holes by the number of pieces that you can get from each yard. Example: If 480 holes need to be hooked: 480/14 = 35.29. This tells us that approximately 36 yards of yarn will be needed to get the required number of pieces.