Hi Nikki,
There was a slight delay in opening the November discussion - we had a brief power outage here.
To answer your question about figuring out the yardage in your sample, yes - you can rip it out and measure the yarn, but then you don't have a sample swatch and you have kinky yarn to measure.
So, make the swatch in the same pattern as the the pattern calls for. A larger swatch is best for accurate measurements.
Finish the swatch before measuring it. You need measurements for the length and the width.
Let's say the finished swatch measures 12 x 12 inches.
Length x width = the area of the swatch which, in this case is 144 inches.
Now, to find the length of the yarn in the swatch, weigh the swatch and multiply the weight times the number of yards in an ounce of the yarn. The results is the yardage of the yarn in the swatch.
Say the swatch weighs 3 ounces and the yarn has 60 yards per ounce. 3 x 60 = 180 yards of yarn.
Then figure how many 12 x 12 squares you would have to knit to equal the area of the item you're making. Say you need 10 12" squares to cover the area. Each square takes 180 yards so then 180 (the yardage for each square) X 10 (the total number of squares needed to cover the area) = 1,800 yards of yarn needed for the entire project.