Stashing on Ravelry

Today, I am sorting through and organizing all the new yarn I got on my trip to the Knit and Crochet show. There’s a lot of it, and like many of you, I already had a lot at home! Without some way to manage it, I would never remember what I have. Luckily, once again, it’s Ravelry to the rescue. I use the “stash” feature to keep track of it all, and I’ve found that really helpful. As soon as yarn enters my home (ok, within a couple of weeks, at least), I enter it into my stash. That way, I always know exactly how much I have of each yarn, including dye lots, fiber content, etc.

You can get to the stash feature by clicking the “My Notebook” tab and then selecting “Stash”. Here’s an example of a stash entry that I just finished. Let’s look at the left column first.

Pictures are not required, but I find they are very helpful later, when I’m looking for something. If you didn’t upload a picture though, you can still see what the yarn looks like. Click on the name of the yarn, and it will take you to the Ravelry yarn entry for that yarn. Want to see the actual colorway you have? Click on the name of the colorway, and you will see other people’s stash entries for that colorway (including their pictures).

As you can see, the entry shows all the details of this specific skein of yarn including where it came from, and how much I paid for it (in this case, it was free). For those of you who sell finished products, this is a great way to help track expenses!

If you have your stash split up into several different locations or containers, you can use the “Stored in” entry to record exactly where you put it. This makes it much easier to find, 6 months from now, when you’ve forgotten. If you click on the location you entered, you will get a list of all the other yarns you have stored in that location. Right now, I rarely use this feature, as all my yarn is stored on the same bookshelf.

The tags section helps you sort and search for yarns later. Making a pair of socks? If you’ve tagged all your sock yarns with the word “sock,” you can simply search your stash for that tag. You can also add notes to help you remember how and why you got the yarn, what you intended to use it for, or just about anything else you want to remember.

Now let’s take a look at the tabs and the right column.

From the tabs you can view additional photos, link to blog posts you may have written about the yarn, and view any comments. These tools are particularly nice if you spun and or dyed the yarn yourself.

Just below the icons for editing, sharing, etc, is a link. This will indicate if your yarn is in your stash or is all used up. If you’re interested in selling or trading this yarn with other users, you can also indicate that here. Clicking the link takes you to the edit screen, where you can change the current status of your yarn. It should be noted that the status does not automatically change to “all used up” once you’ve used it all. If you want it to show that (which you probably do, so you can filter those out of your view), you need to edit that manually.

Participating in a CAL or KAL group? You can share your stash yarn with the group using the “groups” drop down.

Finally, there’s the About this yarn box. Here you can rate the yarn, see projects in which it was used, and see other people’s stash entries. Clicking on the name of the yarn takes you to the the Ravelry yarn entry for that yarn. From there, you can find patterns recommend this yarn specifically, view any forum comments about it, get some ideas of where to buy it, and even see if anyone else is willing to sell or trade some from their personal stash (great for trying to find matching dye lots!). Clicking on the brand name takes you to that company’s page, where you can see other yarns by the same company.

The stash section integrates well with your queue and project pages too, making it easier to plan and track projects! When you queue a project, you can assign a yarn to it. That way you won’t forget what project you bought that yarn for before you get to it (yes, I’ve done that…have you?) When you do start a project, you can link that project to the yarn in your stash. If you do, and you record how much you use for the project, your stash will automatically update to show how much you have left! For more information on project page features, check out my post on Making the most of your Ravelry project pages.