Do you measure or weigh your yarn?
Or neither?
The obvious reason to do either, is to be sure you have enough yarn for your project.
It’s fairly common for patterns to tell you up front how much yarn you need in terms of yards or meters. Some will also tell you how much yarn you need in terms of thickness and in actual weight.
When you buy yarn for your project, commercially produced yarn will state on the label how much yardage or meters and / or how much weight the yarn has. But even if it doesn’t show the weight, you can easily use a kitchen scale to weigh your yarn.
So what if you’re designing on your own? What if you don’t have a pattern, and you’re making something you’ve never made before?
You could measure length, but for speed, consider weighing your yarn.
How does that help you ask?
The weight of your yarn can be used as a means to gauge where you’re at in a project and how much more yarn you still need to finish it.
Say you’re a fairly experienced crocheter but you’re making your own hat design. You know what you’re doing, but you’re not entirely sure how much yarn you’re using to do what you want to do.
Weigh it. You can weigh both the UFO and the yarn you have left halfway through the project to help you gauge whether you have enough yarn weight left to finish it. If the finished portion weighs far more than the leftover yarn, then you’re probably going to run short on your project. And if the yarn you have left weighs far more than your project does so far, then you’ll probably be ok.
You can also weigh your completely finished object so you know how much yarn to put down in your notes for the next time you make it. Or for your pattern if you’re going to write and publish it.
Handy right?
Still, it seems that people have different opinions as to which method is more accurate. Weight or length?
So I put it out to you. Which method do you use? Share your answer in the comments below!
Crochet Liberation Front:
Aberrant Crochet (TM) 
I make a lot of top down sweaters of my own design, or heavily “tweak” the designs of others. I neither measure nor weigh my yarn. I use past experiences as my rule of thumb. Generally speaking, most of my sweaters require/eat up approx 1000 yards of yarn (give or take, more of course if long sleeves are required). And when buying yarn at a close out at a shop? I will buy 1000 yards, but if there’s 1-2 skeins left on the shelf? I’ll snap those up too. I know my method is not scientific, but it works for my purposes.
Weigh it!
I try to remember to weigh the yarn before I even start. If the label says 100g=100m and the yarn weighs different, I know I have a different amount.
(I’ve asked, and dyers say that the color is not noticeable on the weight.)
I also indicate in my Ravelry projects that yardage is by weight for anyone following after me on a project.
I carry my portable kitchen scale in my tools bag (just for hooks, notions, scale, etc) the projects all have their own separate bags. 🙂
That’s awesome Doug, do you have a favorite scale?
I was recommended the AWS (American Weigh Scales) AMW-SCKG by a local yarn-store owner and I have it in my tool bag all the time when I’m not actively using it. I didn’t get the calibration weights, but I do weigh the full skein (or the project and the left-overs if I forget to weigh it at the start), and it seems pretty accurate (usually 100g skeins weigh anywhere from 98-105 depending on the seller).