Shawl Every Day 2021 - Day 2 - Tool Tip: Kitchen Scale

A tool that I think should be in every maker/crafter space is a digital kitchen scale. The two things I use it for most is to 1) weigh yarn and 2) weigh my filament spools.

If I have a partial skein of yarn, I can weigh it and figure out how many yards I have left. In my example, a full skein of that yarn weighs 100 grams and has 340 yards. My partial skein of yarn is 19 grams, so doing the math (19g x 340yds / 100g) means I have about 64 yards left. This will help me figure out if I have enough yarn for a project.

3D printing filament typically comes in 1000g spools, but there’s no easy way to weight just the filament to see how much you have left, like the yarn. Instead I weigh the entire spool when I receive it, subtract 1000g, and mark how much the plastic spool itself weighs. Then later, I can subtract that amount from the weight I have left to see how much actual filament I have.

The scale I use is from OXO, but any simple digital scale that can measure grams will be fine.

Cowl pattern is Vortex Cowl by Janina Böttger.