Free Yarn Calculator | How Much Yarn You Actually Need – Ver 2

 

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Things You Will Need

A Digital Kitchen Weighing Scale. The one that I own is very similar to this one down below. I found this on Amazon and it has over 90k 4.5 star reviews so I thought I’d put the link here for you.

It comes in Multi-unit Conversion and can easily convert between ounces, pounds, grams, and milliliter.

 

I’ve had mine for over 3 years now and have yet to replace the batteries. I used this mainly for measuring baked ingredients AND my yarns! LOL.

If you don’t have a scale, then check out this other self-input yarn calculator here that only requires a measuring tape. Let me know which one works best for you.

 

The Technique

Since this scale is very sensitive to touch, it is highly capable of measuring small swatches! For this demonstration, I will be using a small sample swatch that is roughly 4 x 7 in / 10 x 18cm.

Here I have my swatch, a bowl, and my scale. You don’t have to use a bowl but I find that it helps to distribute the weight evenly and works really well for larger samples too.

First, I will turn on the scale and make sure that it is sitting on an even surface. Then I will place the bowl right in the center of the scale. As you can see it is showing a 12.3 oz weight.

I will remove this number by pressing the Z/T (tare) button on the left. This just means it will offset the weight of the bowl (which we don’t need).

Once I see 0.0oz on the screen, I will now place my swatch in the middle of the bowl. I’ll move it around just to make sure I get a consistent number on the scale.

Now that I have the weight, I will record this and proceed to work on some calculations! 🧮

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Referring to the screenshot above, you will first input the weight and length of your yarn as per the label on your actual yarn. Mine is 5oz and 250 yards.

Next, you will type in the number of rows and stitches of the swatch that you will be measuring. I have 6 rows and 15 Paddle Stitches.

In the last column, you will input the weight you obtained earlier from the scale, and that would be 0.6 oz.

The results show me that for ONE itty bitty stitch, it would weigh a whopping 0.00667 oz! And the length for one stitch is 0.33 yards! That’s like 11.9 in / 30 cm. To be fair this stitch is kinda poufy so it does require quite a lot of yardage!

So now that I have these fantastic numbers, I can go on and measure my entire project.

This calculator comes with 4 separate panel sections which you can use to measure each piece of your work, like for example one for the front and back panel each and two for each sleeve.

But if you are working on a blanket or a shawl, you can just leave the rest of the column empty.