Free tool · yarn
How much yarn do I need? Weigh your swatch.
Pick what you're making and see the yarn for every colour, from the pattern's real stitch count. Then weigh your swatch on a kitchen scale: the tool works out how much yarn your stitches use, turns it into balls from your yarn label and tells you whether the yarn you have is enough. Studio and our blanket tools remember it.
Weighed values stay in this browser. Studio, the name blanket and the C2C bobbin calculator use them for their yarn.
How it works
From grams to your yarn.
Every pattern here knows its own stitch count, round by round. Our estimate gives each knit stitch 4.1 × its width of yarn and each C2C tile 29 × its size, then adds the floats, the cast-on, the ends and a 10% margin. Hands differ, so the swatch replaces that one number with yours.
Weigh the swatch and turn grams into length with the label: a 100 g ball of 220 m is 2.2 m a gram. Divide by the stitches in the swatch and you have the yarn in one of your stitches. Example: 30 stitches × 40 rows at 22 stitches in 10 cm, weighing 12 g in that yarn, is 2.20 cm a stitch, 18% more than our 1.86 cm.
Weighing a swatch is a technical editor's method (Kephren Pritchett scales it by area); we scale by the pattern's real stitch count. What the swatch doesn't measure stays as our estimate: the yarn carried behind colourwork, the cast-on, the ends and the 10% margin. A two-colour swatch only gives one total, so knit the swatch plain in the main yarn.
Before you weigh anything
Our estimates, pattern by pattern.
All colours together, from each pattern's stitch count, at our 4.1 × stitch width (29 × tile size for C2C). Balls use a typical label for that yarn; the tool above uses yours.
| Project | Yarn, all colours | Typical ball |
|---|---|---|
| Christmas sweater, women M (DK) | 1270 m1389 yd | 220 m / 100 g |
| Christmas stocking, classic (worsted) | 280 m307 yd | 190 m / 100 g |
| Heartfelt Reindeer Beanie, Adult M (fingering) | 175 m192 yd | 380 m / 100 g |
| Midnight Snowfall Cowl, Classic (fingering) | 280 m307 yd | 380 m / 100 g |
| Reindeer Hearts C2C Blanket, worsted | 1570 m1717 yd | 190 m / 100 g |
| Crochet name blanket, receiving size (worsted) | 1420 m1553 yd | 190 m / 100 g |