Help with calculating yarn needed

[froggy]

I would like to make a granny square afghan.  The problem is I don't know how to calculate the amount of yarn I would need.  I am going to make the granny squares 6 rounds(4 rounds of color and 2 rounds of border and connecting in border color and finishing row around whole afghan) 88 squares total 8x10. Most likely I'll be using an I or J hook.  Any ideas as where to find some sort of chart to help me calculate the amount of yarn? Any help is greatly appreciated. 

[magiccrochetfan]

I would weigh it.  I bought a digital kitchen scale just for weighing yarn and it is extremely handy.  Make the 4 rounds of inner color, weigh that.  then add the border color and weigh that, subtract the inner color weight to get the border color weight.   multiply those numbers by the number of squares and you will know how many ounces/grams of each color yarn you need to buy for the squares themselves.   

 

I always overbuy because I hate run out and not be able to match colors exactly.  So i would probably buy an extra 10% of the inner color.  And maybe 3 extra skeins for the joining and the outer border, because those things always use a lot more yarn than i think they will.  I guess you could estimate the amount needed for joining by working around one square as you plan to do the joining, weigh that and subtract the previous wts.   and also for the outer border you might be able to estimate in similar way.  

 

If you don't have a scale and don't want to get one, i guess you could make the inner color rounds, make the border rounds , then unravel and just measure the yardage using a yardstick.  Seems like there shouldn't be so many yards that it would be terribly unwieldy to physically measure  the yarn.  

 

Either way, you would need to use the exact yarn you will use for the project in order to get acurate measure, i think.  

[Granny Square]

That's a tough one.  Usually I look at similar sized projects and guess from there (and round up), but (in spite of my name!) I hardly ever do granny squares, and looking at other patterns might not help with many yarn colors.

 

I wonder how accurate it would be if you made a square, ripped it out, and measured the yardage of each round?  Are all the squares going to be the same color scheme (round 1 always color A, round 2 always color B and so on)?  If so this might work, if not...well use the measurement of round 3 or 4 to extrapolate the yardage perhaps?

 

(sigh) Hi Magic!

[ReniC]

Lion Brand's Chart has helped me before. Maybe it will help you too.

[froggy]

I thought about it and to me making one and frogging it is the easiest solution.  Only to me I really hate to frog any work that worked out. 

[froggy]

Thank you all for your responses.