Since my CotLin value pack has two sets of colorways that constitute two fades, I need to figure out when to change to the next colorway. I have no stomach for yarn chicken, so I’ll go to extremes to figure out how many stitches I can get from each skein, and I’ll allow a cushion in case my numbers are off. As a first step, I need to figure out how much fabric, in terms of square inches, my sweater will be.

Estimating the Sweater’s Area

The easiest way to get a rough estimate of a sweater’s area is to

• multiply the widest body circumference times the height from bottom edge to shoulder
• add the sleeve underarm circumference to the wrist circumference, then multiply the sum by the length from wrist to underarm
• add those two numbers together

So for my sweater, the rough estimate of the area of fabric I need to produce is

• 36 x 22 = 792 sq in for the front/back
• (11 + 11) x 7 = 154 sq in for the sleeves
• 792 + 154 = 946 sq in total

Since I’m doing short sleeves, there won’t be any shaping between the underarm and the bottom edge; that’s why 11 appears twice. Now, the total area is most definitely rough, because the front neck shaping is not accounted for, and the raglan yoke shaping means the body isn’t a simple cylinder, like a soup can with the top and bottom both removed. Remember, my goal is to avoid yarn chicken, not to have a precise estimate of the yarn requirements. I just want to make sure I won’t run out of any of the five colorways I’ll use in the sweater.

Swatch Yarn Usage

I went back to my swatches to see how much they weighed, which would tell me how many stitches I could expect to make with each gram of yarn. The 3.00 mm ITR swatch weighs 27.3 g and consists of 49 rounds of 72 stitches, plus the CO and BO. Assuming the crochet CO and plain old ordinary BO use about the same amount of yarn as a regular round (they probably both use more than an ordinary round, but in the FO the proportions of real stitches to the CO and BO will be such that I don’t think the discrepancy will matter here), 51 times 72 is 3672 sts. Just to give myself a margin for error, I’ll say that there are only 3600 sts in the swatch. At 27.3 g, that means I can work about 130 sts from each gram of yarn (it’s really 131.2, but again, rounding down gives some cushion). The swatch is 11.5 inches in circumference and 5.5 inches tall, so it’s 63.25 square inches.

Sweater Yarn Usage Estimate

Since I got 63 sq in of swatch out of 27.3 g of yarn, that means I get 2.32 sq in per gram. Since the entire sweater will be 946 sq in, I need 946 divided by 2.32 equals 408 g of yarn. Since I have five 100-g colorways, I shouldn’t run out of any of the colors.