How to Stretch a Special Yarn: Winning at Yarn Chicken

When Norah Gaughan visited Wing and a Prayer Farm in 2023, she fell in love with the sheep and their yarn. She chose a few skeins of a longwool blend called Taconic Twist, naturally dyed with onion skin, marigold, and indigo to a sage hue. She envisioned a sweater for this yarn, a richly textured cardigan. But with less than 1,500 yards of fine-gauge yarn, what could she make?

You might think that Wing and a Prayer Farm makes a lot of yarn. After all, shepherd Tammy White keeps about 75 sheep, and she blends in some wool purchased from other flocks to add qualities she desires to make up some of her yarns. But the farm raises as many as eight breeds of sheep, from finewools (Cormo and Merino) to longwools (Teeswater and Wensleydale), plus their very special Valais Blacknose sheep, so Tammy chooses wool from just a few sheep in each yarn. In all, Wing and a Prayer produces about a dozen different yarns, which Tammy dyes herself using plants from the farm’s dye garden. The resulting small-batch skeins are, if not one of a kind, at least limited-edition.

Several of Norah’s design choices in the Wee Cardi are yarn-thrifty as well as stylish. If you find yourself with barely enough yarn for your project, here are five ways of winning yarn chicken on garments, plus two specifically for scarves and wraps.

Take It from the Top

During her years as a design director and knitwear designer for national brands, Norah mostly worked garments in pieces from the bottom up, which aren’t easily adjustable on the fly—once the garment is begun, there are few places to save a few yards here or there. For the Wee Cardi, Norah worked from the shoulders down for the back and front, then picked up stitches to work the sleeves from the armhole down. If yarn is running low, you can skip a couple of rounds of ribbing or shorten the sleeves by an inch.

The Wee Cardi starts at the shoulder and is worked down for the back and front, making the length adjustable.