Needlepoint Yarn - How Much Do I Need?

Oh boy...were we really talking about embroidery math before I took a break?  I think we were.  Incentive:  If you make it to the end of this post, you get a picture of the pretty yarn for the project!

And now...how much yarn do I need?  I scoured the Internet, and general consensus seemed to be that tapestry-weight wool covers about 9 square inches per 11 yard  skein.

My design will be 12x16 inches (to fit on a pillow), so that's 192 square inches.  (12 * 16 = 192)

Which is just under 22 skeins.  (192 / 9 = 21.33)

I'm going to order 25 skeins to be careful.  I'd rather have too much yarn than too little.

I divided my nifty homemade pattern into 2 colors of blue and 3 colors of green.

The darker parts are green and the lighter parts are blue.  I'm guess-timating that my pattern is 40% blue and 60% green.  Of that, I think that the blues are 1/3 darker blue and 2/3 lighter blue.  The greens will be about 1/2 medium green and 1/2 darker green, with a smidgen of a very dark green.

So, once I chose the colors and fiddled with the rounding error, I ordered:

7 skeins Appleton 403 Sea Green Medium              ((25*0.6)/2 = 7.5)
8 skeins Appleton 404 Sea Green Medium-Dark    ((25*.06)/2 = 7.5)
1 skein Appleton 406 Sea Green Dark                   ("smidgen" = 1 skein)
7 skeins Appleton 322 Dull Marine Blue Light        (((25*0.4)/3)*2 = 6.7)
3 skeins Appleton 324 Dull Marine Blue Medium   ((25*.04)/3) = 3.3)

And its so pretty!

I will get to work on this project soon. But it will take some time for me to finish.  While we all wait for a final product, I hope to introduce some new features to the blog.  Thank you so much for reading.