Crocheting with a yarn cake

Hi there!
I haven’t been crocheting for very long, and so far I’ve only made amigurumi. Now I’d like to try using a yarn cake to crochet a shawl. However, I’m having trouble making sense of all the information and figuring out how much of a yarn cake I’ll need. How long will the crocheted pieces be with the different yardages and numbers of strands? And if a pattern specifies grams and meterage, how can that be converted to a yarn cake? Maybe you can help me out and understand what I mean.

Thank you
Lyra

Hi,

I’m currently working on my first triangular shawl and using a yarn cake from Lilu’s Märchengarne. 250g/950m, 4-strand. My impression so far is that this is going to be a huge shawl if I want to use up the entire yarn cake. And even though, like you, I usually only make amigurumi, I crochet pretty loosely by my standards.

  Basically, though, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to your question, since yarn cakes vary. Still, one should usually be plenty for a shawl—with their color gradients, they’re practically made for shawls. I hope this helped a little; I’m not a shawl pro myself yet. 

Hi,
It depends on the pattern and how you crochet. If you want to crochet a simple granny square shawl, 750 meters of yarn is enough.
If you’re crocheting one with relief stitches, 950–1,000 meters should be plenty.
It also depends on how big you want your shawl to be. The best thing is to try it out yourself.
Best regards, Kerstin