Your Stash Is Just A Click Away! (Adding Your Yarn To Your Ravelry Account)

Thanks to my hard work yesterday, my yarn stash is finally organized and labeled by yarn weight! (See yesterday's blog post for photos on how I did this.) 

Last night I decided to take on another organizing project: Putting My Stash Into Ravelry.  If you are on Ravelry and like me, have not used this feature before, you must!

To get started, login to your Ravelry Account and Go To "My Notebook" at the top of the page. Select "Stash" from the drop down menu on the left side of the screen.

The top photo shows the stop down menu. You'll see lots of other choices there too. One of these days I will write a blog post on navigating Ravelry to talk about these, but today's focus is on the Stash button.

The bottom photo shows my stash on Ravelry. There's not much there as I just started adding stuff. You can see I have a photo of each yarn as well as the yarn's name and company (If I actually still had the tag and could identify it). Since I lose these a lot, my new resolution is to immediately enter the information and photo of any new yarn I buy right into Ravelry to prevent this. 

Notice right above the photos are some buttons you can click on. First is "Add Stash." This is the one you click on when you want to add yarn to your stash. Once you click on it, a screen comes up where you enter in all of the information about the yarn. Once it is added, be sure to click "Save Stash" at the bottom of the screen. After you are done, you will not see a photo, but you can click on the blank space for one and upload one from your computer quickly. Once uploaded, the photo is saved automatically.

Another cool button is the third one at the top called "Filter Your Stash." Clicking this allows you to sort your stash by weight, yarn fiber, and several other options. This is nice if you have a great deal of yarn in your stash and need to locate something quickly.

So why should you stash your yarn on Ravelry? First, it comes in handy if you are sitting at home and want to cast on a new project.  For example, let's say I want to cast on a new pair of socks and know I have a ton of sock yarn. Rather than physically going through my stash, I can quickly search my stash online while looking at patterns and see what yarn I have on hand. Since I add in which drawer where I have mine stored (Sock-Solid), I can quickly pull out what I need.

The other time having your stash online comes in handy is if you are someplace like Stitches or your Local Yarn Store and are looking at a pattern. If you know the weight of yarn required for a pattern, you can quickly search your stash on Ravelry using your smart phone (assuming you have one). Maybe it is a pattern requiring a few colors of sock yarn and you want to see what you have on hand at home (This helps avoid duplicate purchases too). You can even add in the dye lot of the yarn to your stash notes so if you do run out to your LYS to buy another skein for a project, you can make sure to grab the same dye lot, assuming you purchased the first skein there. 

Another cool feature is you can note whether the yarn in your stash is available for sale/trade. So maybe it is not something you want to knit with, but another user might really want it. If they search for a yarn, they can see who has it stashed and if it is for sale. This is especially helpful if a color way has been discontinued and someone really needs it. 

So there's my tutorial on stashing your yarn on Ravelry. If you don't have an account, use the link above to sign up for free. It is an amazing site with thousands of free patterns plus lots of discussion forums, knit a long a groups, and more!