Yardage

It takes less yards of fat yarn to make a similar thing in a thin yarn.

Books that have projects for one skein of yarn are a great place to study this phenomenon.

There are 3 books in the series called One Skein Wonders by Judith Durant. The books are divided into Chapters by yarn thickness. The projects are made with different types of yarns. One can get a great sense of how much of what it takes to make what. I spent probably a month going through the first book in this series to match project with yarn thickness with yardage with needle size. I never made anything out of the book yet although the directions look really great for beginners (techniques explained).

I have started but not completed two projects in Leigh Radford's book called One Skein. That's where I found the garter stitch fingerless mitts with the dropped stitch detail. I also tried to make the Baby Bolero which would have turned out super cute (needs two skeins of the yarn I used, Mission Falls Cotton, awesome, but less yardage per skein than the yarn recommended) if I had known how to sew pieces together. The book isn't really set up for beginners and doesn't explain a lot of techniques. Turns out when you seam knitted clothing that's made out of thick yarns you either use thinner yarn or you split the yarn (if it's splittable). The seams were too bulky to even think of forcing a baby to shove his arm through. I used the bulky yarn to sew together little 8" sleeves and then I sewed them together using a whip stitch. The seams would have competed with the baby's arms for space. Needless to say, the baby didn't get his bolero.

Another great book for studying yardage is called The Field Guide to Knitting by Jackie Pawlowski. This is a tiny, thick book that gives all kinds of information about different stitch patterns in the same way that Birders learn about Birds out in the field or Insecters learn about Insects. It's a great format for those of us who spent our childhoods reading Encyclopedias. I remember being awestruck by a sales clerk at one of the first stores I went into who told me that cables take up a lot more yarn than stockinette. Ever since then these differences of yarn hogginess have fascinated me. Stockinette takes up slightly less yarn than Garter Stitch. It's all in here along with more than a hundred other alternatives.