As the title of this post suggests, I have indeed been thinking – and I am hoping for a bit of feedback on this too please.

So here goes… Bobbins, people often measure bobbins by the weight of yarn they hold. For example, “I can fit 250gm of yarn onto my large bobbin” or similar. This is not making sense to me because there is so much potential inconsistency. Different fibres have different densities, different yarns have different densities, spinners can pack the yarn tighter or looser on to a bobbin. So if my bobbin holds 250gm of fibre, is it lace weight or something really lofty, is it Romney or Angora rabbit? There are so many variables in measuring by weight!

My thoughts are that measuring the volume of a bobbin makes more sense – the volume of yarn that can be contained on the cylinder shape made by the bobbin.

The primary issue with this is that volume measures are in cubic centimetres or cubic metres or the equivalent imperial measure. I personally find these hard to visualise (what size does 1cm^3 look like?). I thought that measuring in liquid units might be better, I can picture a litre or a pint.

I did some measuring of our bobbins and came up with the following numbers:

LACE BOBBIN – 0.25 litres or 0.5 pints
STANDARD BOBBIN – 0.5 litres or 1.0 pints
JUMBO BOBBIN – 1.0 litres or 2.0 pints

So what do you think? Is this a useful way to measure bobbin capacity? If so what units would you use (particularly in countries that use imperial measures)? Your feedback would be very valued thanks 🙂

Andy