How to use Ravelry STASH feature

A super easy way to manage your stash digitally!

INTRO

Now, before we begin, I must say that doing this on your phone is probably easiest for uploading photos. And that this is going to be a slow process - especially if you have a large stash. But you'll need your phone camera, a kitchen scale, and your physical stash.

WHERE TO FIND IT

This is the easiest part of getting started with documenting and keeping track of your stash. In your Ravelry account, near your profile photo in the top right, there is a "my notebook". Click on that an you'll see "stash". That is where your digital yarn database will be kept.

TAKE A PICTURE

I highly encourage you do add photos. There is nothing worse than having 100 yarns in your possession, wanting to quickly look through them via Ravelry for ideas, and not having a visual on what colors you have, or shades of colors.

Put your yarn near natural light - this will make sure that your photos will be accurate to what your yarn looks like in real life. This could be by a window, or even outside in shade. Sometimes cameras can play tricks and make grey yarn look blue or make red yarn look brown even. Ask me how I know!

WEIGH YOUR YARN

You can use a kitchen scale, and put it in grams. Weigh your yarn and take note what the scale says. This will be the easiest way to input into Ravelry, and the Ravelry system will calculate your yardage for you - no need to do any math calculations!

Now wait, the scale says the yarn on there has 20 grams. This is not the yarn you used in your project - this is what you have leftover! To find out how many grams were used, take your starting yarn weight and subtract it from what your scale says. This number will give you how much grams was used in your project.

If you are using a brand new skein, then it may be 100 starting grams, minus 20 grams left over, equals 80 grams used in your project.

If you are using a previously used yarn, the same logic applies. Take your starting weight, minus the weight of the yarn left over, and that gives you how much was used.

ADD TO STASH

Now in your Ravelry stash on the left side of the page, hit "add to stash". Then it will ask you "where is this yarn purchased". For me, I don't remember where I got half of it. I usually choose "store/not sure". Then it will have two sections - Name of Stashed Yarn, and Yarn Company Brand Name. For 'Name of stashed yarn' this is the yarn base. You only want to put the base name, not the colorway - you'll do that later. 'Yarn company brand name' is the company of the yarn.

Click "continue" to search for the yarn in Ravelry. A billion options might come up, or maybe just a few. Either way, your yarn should be in the Ravelry database. Find your correct yarn company and yarn base, and 'choose this yarn'.

Here you put in all the yarn info including photos, colorway, amount, dye lot, etc.

EXAMPLE

Let's say we have Cascade Heritage sock yarn in color Golden Yellow. I'm going to fill in the need-to-know information. Not everything on the page needs filled in. But at the very least, you'll want to know the specifics about the yarn itself.

Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage

Colorway: Golden Yellow

Closest Color?: Yellow

Per Skein: (Should be pre-filled, if the yarn has been added to Ravelry.)

Skeins: Enter number of skeins you have, OR,

Enter Totals Instead: Enter the grams you have. (You can leave 'yards' blank, the system will do the math for you when you hit save.)

Dye lot: Enter the dye lot number listed on the yarn tag.

Photos: Add your photos for a visual reference!

UPDATING AFTER A PROJECT

So you'd made something, and now you need to update your yarn stash so you have the correct amount of yarn in file for your next project. Go to your "projects" under "my notebook", and open the project you just finished. In there you will see "yarn", then click" use stash yarn". Now you will have to search for the yarn you used. There are a few ways you can search - either by the yarn brand name or even by color to find your yarn. Find it and click "use". Then you will need to weigh your yarn in grams. Then under the yarn information, click "enter totals instead" and put in how many grams you used.

Adding your yarn like this into a project will automatically update your totals in your stash! So when you are looking through your digital stash, you don't need to worry about updating it manually. When a yarn is used up, you can edit that yarn and move it to "all used up".

RESTOCKING A YARN

Another thing I discovered recently, is what you need to do when you buy more of the same yarn. You can 'edit' your yarn, and add in the grams you've purchased. BUT, you will need to delete whatever the yardage says. If you don't delete it, then it will assume you had the same yardage as before, but with more grams. As long as Ravelry as the yarn information from when you first put it in, the system will automatically update to your new yardage.

IMPORTANT NOTES

When you do start inputting your yards/grams into your stash, or updating a project page, you will want to make sure to just stick to updating the grams. If you only update the yards/meters, Ravelry will not automatically update and input how many grams remain. But if you update the grams, it will update the yards/meters automatically. I don't know why it does this, but I learned this the hard way.

SEARCHING YOUR STASH

Once you have all your yarns uploaded, Ravelry makes it super easy to look at all your yarn at a quick glance. One thing, is it will show you right on your yarn photo how much yarn you have left. You can change this so it shows you grams, yards, skeins, ounces, or meters. No need to click on every single one to look at the details - it's already right in front of you.

The other feature, is the search and filter. You can sort your yarn by color, yarn weight, amount remaining, and more. It also allows you search for yarns you haven't or haven't used in a project. This method if yarn organization is amazingly easy to use and a life saver when you have so much yarn it's just piled in buckets.

And speaking of piled in buckets, if you're yarn is halfway organized in real life, you can add to the "notes" section of that yarn in Ravelry to remind yourself where you put it!

OTHER FEATURES

Another cool feature of the Ravelry Stash, is you can mark yarns as "will trade or sell". Just put your terms in the notes section, and who knows - maybe someone is looking for that exact yarn you have! I'm not sure how often people actually trade or sell yarns with this feature, but I have a few listed myself, and people have looked at them. You never know, it might be a fun way to destash your yarn!

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you found these tips and tricks helpful! Do you have any other tips? Comment below!

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