Crochet Planned Pooling Calculator

Variegated yarn repeats its colours every so many stitches. Get the row length to line up with that repeat and the colours stack into columns, diagonals or argyle instead of scattering. This works out where they would fall — and gives you a stitch count to start testing from, which is a different thing from a promise.

Test your variegated yarn colour repeat

This models the arithmetic of the repeat. It cannot predict your fabric, because your tension, hook and yarn all move the answer.

1. How you measured the colours
Counting is the more reliable of the two. Measuring needs a second measurement, and both its errors land in the same answer.
One full cycle, before it starts over.
Whatever you call it.
On screen only. The letter identifies it.
Stitches this colour gave you.
Whatever you call it.
On screen only. The letter identifies it.
Stitches this colour gave you.
Whatever you call it.
On screen only. The letter identifies it.
Stitches this colour gave you.
Whatever you call it.
On screen only. The letter identifies it.
Stitches this colour gave you.
2. How you are working
The one you want to test. Nudge it below.
A turning chain eats yarn too, which shifts the colours. Count it if it is not worked into the row.
Turning reverses every other row, which is what makes argyle rather than a plain diagonal.
Up to 40.

39 stitches

How planned pooling works

Think of the yarn as one very long line of stitches rather than as a ball. Somewhere along that line the colours run cream, terracotta, sage, ochre, and then cream again. The number of stitches from one cream to the next is the repeat, and it is the only property of the yarn this calculation needs.

Now start crocheting. A row eats a fixed number of stitches off that line. When you turn and work the next row, you do not start at the same point in the colour cycle — you start wherever the previous row left off. How far along that is, relative to the repeat, is the whole of planned pooling.

If a row happens to consume exactly one repeat, every row begins on the same colour and the colours line up into columns. If a row consumes one stitch more than a repeat, every row begins one stitch further along, and the columns lean over into a diagonal. Anything in between gives something in between.

So there is really only one number doing the work: the row length, less however many whole repeats fit inside it. That remainder is how far the pattern shifts per row, and everything you see in the fabric follows from it.

A strip of stitches laid out in a line showing two identical repeats of a variegated yarn's colour cycle, each stitch drawn as a block carrying its colour's letter and its own fill pattern. The cycle runs 5 stitches of A Cream, 7 of B Terracotta, 6 of C Sage and 8 of D Ochre, adding up to a repeat of 26 stitches. A ruler beneath marks where the first repeat ends and the second begins, and the second is identical. The figure notes that the stitches each colour gives should be counted by crocheting them, because measuring the yarn and dividing needs a second measurement and puts both errors into the same answer.
The repeat is the number of stitches from one colour back round to itself — here, 26.

Measure the colour sequence first

Everything downstream depends on one number, so it is worth getting properly rather than quickly. There are two ways, and they are not equally good.

Count the stitches. Crochet a strip in the stitch you actually intend to use, with the hook you actually intend to use, and count how many stitches each colour gives you before it changes. Write down the counts in order. This is the better method for a reason worth understanding: it measures the thing you care about — stitches per colour — directly, and it does so under your own tension.

Measure the length. Unwind the yarn, measure each colour run, then measure how much yarn one stitch consumes, and divide. This works, but it is second best. It needs two measurements instead of one, both of them fiddly, and the errors do not cancel: an error in yarn-per-stitch scales every colour at once, in the same direction.

It also has to round. If a colour run comes out as 14.33 stitches, the fabric cannot hold a third of a stitch, so it becomes 14 — and if all four colours round the same way, the repeat you feed the calculator is out before you have worked a single row. The calculator shows you the unrounded figures for exactly this reason.

Whichever method you use, count a second repeat and check it matches the first. Variegated yarns are not perfectly consistent, and knowing how much yours varies is worth more than an extra decimal place.

Why stitch count changes the pooling pattern

Take the 26-stitch repeat above and try it at different row lengths.

At exactly 26 stitches, the row consumes one whole repeat, so every row starts on the same colour. Worked in the round that gives vertical stripes. Worked flat it does something slightly different, because turning reverses every other row — you get a mirrored pattern two rows deep rather than plain columns.

At 27 stitches, each row starts one stitch further along. The pattern leans, and it takes 26 rows before it comes back to where it began.

At 39 stitches — one and a half repeats — each row shifts by 13, which is exactly half the repeat, so row 2 starts halfway through the cycle and row 3 is back at the beginning. The pattern is 2 rows deep, and it is the classic argyle arrangement.

Note what changed and what did not. The yarn is identical in all three. The hook is identical. The only difference is how many stitches are in a row, and it completely changes the fabric.

Four blocks of crochet fabric drawn stitch by stitch in a two-by-two arrangement, all using the same 26-stitch variegated repeat worked flat, at four different row lengths. A row of 26 stitches, exactly one repeat, shifts the colours 0 each row and returns to its starting placement after 1 row. A row of 27, one stitch more, shifts 1 each row and returns after 26 rows. A row of 39, one and a half repeats, shifts 13 each row and returns after 2 rows. A row of 30 shifts 4 each row and returns after 13 rows. Each stitch is filled with its colour and that colour's own pattern. Because the work is turned, every other row is crocheted in the opposite direction, which is what bends a diagonal into the V of argyle; in the round it stays a diagonal. None of the four is the right answer.
One yarn, one hook, four row lengths. The row length is the only thing that changed.

How tension changes your result

This is where planned pooling stops being arithmetic and starts being craft, and it is the reason this page will not tell you a row length that works.

Your tension decides how much yarn each stitch consumes. Crochet a little tighter than when you measured and each stitch takes less yarn, so a colour run stretches over more stitches and the repeat gets longer. Crochet a little looser and the repeat gets shorter. The direction is certain. The size of it is not something anybody can tell you without watching you crochet.

The trouble is that a repeat only has to move by one stitch for a row length that lined up to stop lining up. That is why pooling has a reputation for being temperamental: it is genuinely sensitive, and tension drifts over an evening, between sessions, and when you are tired or tense.

Several other things move the answer too. The stitch you use changes yarn per stitch entirely — a treble eats far more than a double crochet. Hook size changes it. Whether you work into the front loop, back loop or both changes it. The turning chain consumes yarn that never appears in a row. And the yarn itself is not perfectly consistent from one repeat to the next.

None of this makes the calculation useless. It makes it a starting point rather than an answer.

A schematic comparison of one variegated colour repeat under three different tensions, drawn as three strips of stitches, each stitch carrying its colour's own fill pattern. The middle strip is the repeat as measured. The top strip shows tighter tension, where each stitch takes less yarn so a colour run covers more stitches and the repeat becomes longer. The bottom strip shows looser tension, where each stitch takes more yarn so a colour run covers fewer stitches and the repeat becomes shorter. The figure states twice that the amounts drawn are illustrative only: the direction tension pushes the count is certain, but how far it moves for any particular person is not predictable from the page and has to be found by crocheting a test strip and counting again.
The direction is certain. The amount is not, and no diagram can tell you what your hands do.

How to adjust by one stitch at a time

This is the part that actually gets people to a pattern they like, and it is why the calculator has a plus and minus button rather than just a field.

Start from the row length the arithmetic suggests. Work several rows — enough to see the pattern establish, which usually means at least as many rows as the calculator says the cycle takes. Then look at what you have, rather than at what you hoped for.

If the colours are drifting steadily in one direction and you wanted them stacked, your row is slightly too long or too short. Change it by one stitch and work several more rows. One stitch is genuinely enough: on a 26-stitch repeat, a single stitch changes the per-row shift by one, which after ten rows has moved the pattern by ten stitches.

Change one thing at a time, and change it by one. Adjusting the row length and the hook together tells you nothing about which did what. And resist the urge to jump by five stitches because one felt too small — five stitches is a completely different pattern, not a slightly better version of the same one.

Frog back to the start of the section you are testing, not to the beginning of the project. A pooling test is a swatch, and swatches are meant to be undone.

Worked planned pooling example

A yarn is crocheted in double crochet and gives 5 stitches of cream, 7 of terracotta, 6 of sage and 8 of ochre before starting over.

The repeat is 5 + 7 + 6 + 8 = 26 stitches.

Trying a row of 39 stitches: 39 divided by 26 is one whole repeat with 13 left over. So each row starts 13 stitches further along the cycle than the last, and since 13 is exactly half of 26, the second row starts halfway through and the third is back at the beginning. The pattern is 2 rows deep.

The table below shows what the neighbouring row lengths would do instead. It is worth reading as a set of options rather than looking for the winner — a shift of 13 and a shift of 1 are both perfectly good patterns, they are simply different ones.

Row lengths either side of a 40-stitch target, on the 26-stitch repeat above. None of these is the right answer; each is a different pattern.
Row lengthShifts each rowReturns to its start after
36 sts1013 rows
37 sts1126 rows
38 sts1213 rows
39 sts132 rows
40 sts — the target1413 rows
41 sts1526 rows
42 sts1613 rows
43 sts1726 rows
44 sts1813 rows

The right way to use this is: pick one, crochet fourteen or so rows, and look. If it is not what you wanted, move one stitch and look again. Start testing around 39 stitches is the honest form of the advice; anything stronger would be pretending your tension is known.

Common planned pooling problems

It looked right for six rows and then drifted. Almost always tension. Your first rows were worked at the tension you measured at, and then you relaxed. It can also be the yarn: check whether the repeat is still the length you measured, further along the ball.

The colours are muddled rather than patterned. Check the repeat itself first. If the counted stitches per colour are wrong, everything downstream is wrong, and a mis-count of one or two is easy to make on a colour with a soft transition rather than a sharp one.

Every row starts in a different place. Something is consuming yarn that is not in your row count — usually a turning chain, sometimes a join or a border stitch. Put it in the turning chain field.

It works flat but not in the round. These genuinely differ. Worked flat, turning reverses every other row; worked in the round every row runs the same way. The same row length gives different fabric in each, which is why the calculator asks.

The pattern is right but the piece is the wrong width. This is the real constraint of planned pooling, and it deserves saying plainly: the row length is set by the yarn, not by you. If the pattern you want needs 39 stitches and your project needs 50, you cannot have both from this yarn at this tension. Change the hook, change the stitch, or accept a different pattern.

Colour transitions are soft, so counting is guesswork. Some variegated yarns fade rather than switch. Count to the midpoint of the transition, consistently, and accept that the answer is approximate — then expect to do more adjusting by hand.

Frequently asked questions

Will this tell me the exact stitch count for argyle? No, and be wary of anything that claims to. It works out where the colours fall for a row length you give it, on the repeat you measured. Your tension moves the repeat, so the output is where to begin testing.

Why does my answer differ from a video I watched? Because it is a different yarn, a different hook and different hands. A stitch count that pooled for someone else is not transferable; only the method is.

Does the yarn brand matter? Only through the repeat length, which you measure yourself. Yarns marketed for pooling tend to have longer, more consistent colour runs, which makes them more forgiving — not automatic.

Can I do this with a self-striping yarn? Self-striping yarns have very long colour runs, often longer than several rows, so they stripe rather than pool. The same arithmetic applies; the repeat is simply large enough that the pattern is horizontal bands.

What if a colour appears twice in one cycle? Enter it twice, as two separate entries with their own stitch counts. The cycle is the sequence, not the set of colours.

Do I have to use double crochet? No. Any stitch works, but the yarn per stitch differs by stitch, so measure your repeat in the stitch you will actually use. Changing stitch after measuring invalidates the repeat.

Methodology and limits

  • The repeat is the sum of the stitches you enter for each colour.
  • The shift per row is the row length plus the turning chain, less however many whole repeats fit inside it.
  • The cycle — how many rows before the placement returns exactly to its start — is the repeat divided by the greatest common divisor of the shift and the repeat.
  • The preview tracks direction. Worked flat, every other row is drawn reversed, because that is what turning does. Worked in the round, it is not.
  • Measured mode rounds, and shows the unrounded figure so you can see how much was discarded.
  • Nothing here is a prediction. The model assumes every stitch consumes exactly the same length of yarn and every colour run is exactly the same length. Neither is true. The output is a place to start testing.
  • No accuracy figure is given, because there is no honest one to give. How closely your fabric matches depends on your tension consistency, which this page cannot observe.
  • Row length is limited to 400 stitches and the preview to 40 rows.