What Visiting a Yarn Factory Taught Me About Organizing My Stash

I am so lucky to live ten minutes from Northern Europe’s largest yarn factory — Sandnes Garn. Their outlet is where half my salary has gone for the past decade. Shopping there always feels like a treasure hunt, and I always, always find something. Alongside the regular yarn, they sell yarn with small imperfections too: slight color variation from the color chart, test runs, skeins that never got a label.

The building itself doesn’t try to be charming, but past the door it’s aisle after aisle of skeins, knitting supplies, and, in fact, an inspiring selection of home interior items. Every knitter’s dream.

Three bags of yarn later

My last treasure hunt ended up with me bringing home three bags full of yarn. Do I already have yarn for several projects? Yes. Did I need this too? Yes. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you yarn, and that’s pretty much the same thing.

A decade of treasure hunts adds up, though. At some point it gets difficult to keep track of what you have. That’s where Knitkeep is a lifesaver: every skein gets its own entry — weight, quantity, status — and even yarn I’d half-forgotten I owned, like a warm taupe Peer Gynt and a soft plum Kid Silk Mohair, went in within a couple of minutes each.

When your local shop isn’t so local

The majority of people don’t have the luxury of a short drive to Sandnes Garn, though. Some yarns can be hard to track down, so if I ever need to substitute one into a pattern written for something else, I need to know what actually matches. Knitkeep’s yarn substitution tool helps me with that: search a yarn by name and it surfaces substitutes with matching stitch counts, from fingering-weight BC Garn Semilla Fino and Brooklyn Tweed Loft, to worsted-weight Brooklyn Tweed Shelter, Cascade 220, and Cascade 220 Superwash, down to Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino for sport-weight projects.

Three things I’m doing differently now

• Log it before it leaves the bag. The five minutes it takes right after a shop trip is the only time I’ll actually remember quantities and dye lots.
• Write down what a skein is for, not just what it is. “Maybe a cardigan someday” counts, and it’s the difference between a stash and an inventory.
• Check gauge substitutes before falling for a pattern that calls for a yarn I can’t get.

About Knitkeep: it’s free. Open knitkeep.com on your phone, add it to your home screen, and it works just like any other app from there.

If your stash currently lives in tote bags and hope, this is your sign to get it down in one place before the next trip — factory outlet or your favorite yarn shop. Try Knitkeep for free and see how fast a pile of skeins turns into a stash you can actually search.