From Shawls and Scarves: The Best of Knitter's Magazine:

Amount of yarn needed:  9 oz (250 g) of 2-ply Tussah silk, or fingering-weight wool with 30-32 wpi.

Knitters work with the tools available, and their construction techniques are adapted to those tools. In the 19th century, the seamless squares were worked in sections which involved painstaking grafting. Today’s knitters, with the advantage of circular needles, can recreate the designs much more simply with a few stitches to graft at the very end.