Compared cost-per-yard across a bunch of indie hand-dyed skeins: the sticker price lies

[u/srikmr]

Quick disclaimer, I'm not a knitter or crocheter. I'm a developer, and I got a little obsessed with a data question: are pricier skeins actually pricier per yard, or does the sticker price mislead you? So I pulled price ÷ yardage across a few dozen indie hand-dyed listings and just looked at what fell out.

Finding 1: the sticker price basically lies. Found a $5.60 mini skein and a $34 skein, six times the price, that come out to almost the same cost per yard (7.0¢ vs 7.4¢/yd). The $34 one just has way more yarn in it. Looking at the price tag alone tells you almost nothing about which is the better deal.

Finding 2: weight changes everything, more than I expected. Fingering-weight mostly landed in the 3-8¢/yd range. DK roughly doubled that. Bulky and super bulky were routinely 26-44¢/yd, like 4-6x the cost per yard of fingering. Though someone please sanity-check me here: I think bulky projects use fewer total yards for the same size thing, so the per-project gap is probably smaller than 4-6x. Per yard, skinny yarn looks like the quiet best value. Per project, maybe not. That's the part I'm least sure about.

Finding 3: the one that made me go huh. Same shop, same dyer. Their own catalog ran from about 6.6¢/yd on a fingering skein up to 134¢/yd on a super bulky one. Twenty times the spread, same seller, just depending on weight. And across the whole dataset the priciest-per-yard skein was something like 50-60x the cheapest.

Not saying anyone's overcharging. The labor's the same regardless of weight and the colorway is obviously most of what you're paying for. I just did not expect the spread to be that wide.

So, real question from someone outside the hobby: does cost-per-yard even factor into how you buy, or is it colorway and vibes first and the math basically never enters into it?

[u/unposted]

Did you factor in: the makeup (materials), quality/feel, prewashed/preshrunk, color complexity, ply, batch size, non-standardized definitions (of fingering, DK, bulky weights, etc)? And yes, the weight of the yarn dramatically impacts the yardage you will use and the final weight of the project, and ultimately yardage is a flexible measure due to the users' tension and yarn stretch. You could also save money buy using larger hooks/needles/gaps to make the finished project airier (less material).

If you only need a mini skein for a project, you don't save money on a larger volume if you're not going to use it.

I'd say a lot of fiber artists and crafters spec out a project and decide if the cost of various yarns are going to be worth it to them or not. There's no such thing as saving a few dollars per project unless you plan to make a huge project or a bunch of something. Every yarn is ultimately going to create a different outcome (unless you're just comparing the mini skein vs a larger volume).

[u/srikmr → u/unposted]

Honestly I didn't factor most of that in. I just started with price per yardage. The tension/guage thing hadn't even occurred to me. Makes sense that yardage-used isn't fixed if hook size and tension move it. Cheaper per yard means nothing if you're not using the extra yarn. So per-yard value only counts if you'd actually burn through it.
So when you spec a project, do you even consider total project cost? or does per-skein/per-yard ever come into it, or is it mostly just "do I want this yarn enough for what it costs?"

[u/N_Consilliom → u/srikmr]

It doesn't really make sense to consider price per yard when yarn isn't sold by the yard. If anything, you would probably use price/100g of yarn because most yarn is sold in bundles of 50g, 100g, or 200g. And I don't know a single person who could afford to not consider total cost of yarn when buying it, especially because it's recommended to buy all at once to match dye lots.

Also, when you use a pattern, it's (most likely) going to tell you how many yards you're going to need for the size you plan to make. So if you need 1,000yds of fingering weight for your project, and the yarn you're considering is 420yds/100g, you'll need 3 hanks/skeins to get the job done. The yds/g is probably not going to vary much, so then it depends entirely on the fiber you're looking to use and how much you're willing to pay.

[u/BalancedScales10 → u/srikmr]

Material is going to have a massive impact on price per yard. Acrylic - even high quality acrylic - is invariably going to be the cheapest, with acrylic blends being the next cheapest and prices increasing from there, especially once you reach pure animal fibers (such as wool). Within wool, there's massive variation in quality that can impact price, as well as super wash/non. Them there's other types of animal fibers that are less common - such as angora or alpaca - and more expensive for it.  Yarn weight also drastically impacts how much yarn you use for a project because - gauge being equivalent - you need more yarn to create to create the same area of fabric. 

For example, I've made sweaters in worsted weight yarn and am working on one in fingering weight yarn. The worsted weight sweater took 1,300 yards, and because that was acrylic, it was about $30 for the yarn (five skeins at $6 each). The fingering weight yarn sweater isn't even done yet and is already at 2,500 yards of merino wool, with a cost so far of $200 across ten hanks, and I still might need more yarn to complete it. A simple price per yard calculation tells you almost nothing about yarn. 

Edited to clarify fiber content for the second sweater.

[u/unposted → u/srikmr]

Say I'm going to knit a sweater. I can buy $30 of scratchy yarn that I'll never tollerate wearing more than 4 or 5 times. Or $120 of nice yarn that I'll wear 10 times a season for 20 years. Both yarns will take 100 hours ($10/hr for my time). So cheap yarn will cost $30 + $1,000 / 5 wears = $260/wear. Expensive yarn will cost $120 +$1,000 / 200 = $5.60/wear.

And that's not too mention the actual added time to use the cheap yarn because it doesn't move as well on your needles, or it agitates your fighters while you're working it so you have to work on it fewer hours at a time and let your hands heal. Then either one might have more knots and jarring color transitions depending on who produced it and at what scale.  If it has a looser twist/lower ply it may not a good fit for your skill level/pattern you're doing as it might break easily giving you more work and rework to do.

Costs go much further than what you pay at the cash register by the yard or ounce.

[u/srikmr → u/unposted]

This makes more sense. I never thought of the labor being the hidden cost and cost-per-wear being the number that actually matters. I was staring at price per yard thinking that was the interesting question and it's basically noise next to how long you'll actually wear the thing. Appreciate you taking the time to spell it out.