How to Estimate Yardage in an Odd Ball of Yarn

If you have a bit of yarn left over from a past project or any ball of yarn that has lost its ball band, it’s natural to wonder exactly how much yarn you have there.

It’s never a good idea to start a knitting project not knowing if you have enough yarn to finish it, but the good news is there are a couple of ways to estimate how much yarn you have.

The more time-consuming way to do it is to measure out a certain quantity of the yarn, say 10 or 25 yards, weigh that and determine your yards per ounce. Then weigh the whole skein and you can get a pretty good guess at the yardage.

If your yarn is in a hank, you can stretch it out, measure the length of the hank itself, count the number of strands and multiply by the length of one strand to determine yardage.

Or you can make a less scientific but still relatively accurate guess based on the average weight of yarn in the yarn weight category you’re dealing with, as outlined in this post from Interweave. If you know that you have light weight yarn (verified with a wraps per inch tool or by wrapping the yarn around a ruler), using the chart on that post you can see that you typically get 1,200 to 1,800 yards a pound in that weight of yarn.

Weigh your skeins and you can figure out a somewhat close range for how much yardage you have. Err on the side of assuming you have less to avoid tragedy.

Have you ever used one of these methods to determine yardage on unknown balls or hanks of yarn? Or do you have another method? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo: Interweave.]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

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