How much yarn do I have?

You’ve just found a pattern you like, have gone through your stash and found the perfect left over yarn – but do you
have enough? How do you know how much you have?

In this tip we’ll discuss how to work out the meterage in left over balls.  It is also a useful technique for working out how much yarn you have left relative to the progress on your project – and help answer the question will I have enough?

Hopefully you’ve kept the yarn label or details somewhere to tell you the original weight and meterage of the full ball. If you haven’t, but have the name, you can almost always find out this information on google, I use the following sites to find out about yarn –  Ravelry or YarnSub.

Base Formula
Firstly weigh the remaining yarn. Do you remember doing algebra at school? This is what we use here – apply the following formula to work out the remaining meterage:

(Weight of the leftover yarn X Original meterage in the ball) / Original weight of the ball.

For example – I have some Catona cotton left over and it weighs 15g. A full ball of Catona cotton weighs 50gm and has 125m on it.
Therefore  (15 x 125)/ 50 = 37.5m.  I hae 37.5metres left on the ball.

If you have lots of little balls that you are using in the project and just need a total weight, get a light container to put them in to weigh them altogether.  Ensure the scales you use are sensitive enough to the balls and that you tare the scales for the weight of the container.

My ball has a cardboard centre/cone
Some balls have a solid centre or cone around which the yarn is wound. For example Create Handmade is wound around a cardboard centre. When weighing your left over yarn, you will need to estimate the weight of this centre as this hasn’t been included in the original weight of the yarn. If you have some full balls, weigh these to see how much over the yarn weight the ball actually is to get an estimate of the weight of the centre and then deduct this when you weigh your partial ball.

I don’t have my label
What do you do if you don’t know what the yarn is and can’t find the original weight and meterage?

A little more work is required, but we still use algebra! The best way I have found is to make a sample swatch with basic stitches – say 10cm x 10cm.  (You don’t need to cut the yarn for this exercise). Weigh the swatch and mark the finishing point of the yarn with a marker.  Pull the swatch undone and measure the meterage used from the marker to the end, then apply the following forumula:

(Meterage used in the swatch/weight of the swatch in grams) x Weight of the remaining yarn.

For example – I found some alpaca wool I had purchased many years ago and didn’t know what it was. I crocheted
up a 10x10cm square which weighed 10g. I then pulled the square undone and worked out I had used 30m of yarn.
This gave me a meterage of 3m per gram. ( 30/10). I then weighed the whole of the alpaca I had left – 35g. This
meant I had 105m of this yarn. This method is also good when yarn is given to you, picked up from opshops, or
when reclaimed from frogging a project or recycling.

This method is also useful for homespun yarn.

Another method – instead of crocheting up a swatch is to actually measure out say 20 metres of the yarn and wind it into a ball.  Don’t cut it, but then weigh the ball.  Apply the same formula above to determine the meterage.

Other uses for this formula
This approach can also be useful in other situations such as where you are making a shawl or blanket that you need to know the halfway point of a ball(s), for example with a corner to corner pattern.  Or where you are using a whirl in a symmetrical shawl/blanket.  Or making a pair of socks or gloves, and need to ensure you have enough to complete both!

Ensure you weigh the ball at the beginning, or know your starting weight.  Calculate your halfway point and regularly weight what is left until you get to that halfway point.

Many patterns are written for specific yarn brands and they often just give you the weight of the ball rather than the meterage.  If you are not using that same yarn, it is important to consider the meterage of the yarn rather than the weight, as all fibres have different weights.  Always use the following formula to calculate the meterage required for a project rather than just rely on the grams:

Weight of the ball x meterage per ball = total required meterage.