Yarn Stash Tracker
A stash total cannot answer "enough for a sweater" — a garment needs one dye lot. On a real stash the total overstates by 3.8x.
Stored in this browser only — no account, nothing uploaded. Export to CSV to keep a copy.
Can I make…
| Yarn | Colourway | Lot | Weight | Yards | Cost |
|---|
"Do I have enough for a sweater?" is not a sum
Every stash spreadsheet totals the yardage, and the total is close to meaningless — because a garment needs its yardage in one yarn, ideally in one dye lot. Adding up a drawer of odd balls answers a question nobody has.
Worked through a realistic ten-entry stash: 1,651 yards in total, of which the largest single yarn is 660 and the largest single dye lot is 440. Against a 1,000-yard sweater the total cheerfully says yes and the honest query says no — the comforting number overstates the useful one by 3.8×.
So this reports all three and ranks by whichever one your project actually needs. That is a property of the project, not of the stash, which is why the tool asks instead of picking: a scrappy blanket can use the total honestly, a striped piece can mix dye lots, and a plain sweater cannot do either.
Why the dye lot matters more than it sounds
Two balls of the same yarn from different dye lots are visibly different in daylight, and on a large plain piece the difference lands across a whole sleeve or half a back where nobody can miss it. It is not subtle and it cannot be blocked out. If you are alternating rows between two balls anyway — which is the standard trick for exactly this problem — then the by-yarn figure is the one to use, and the gap between the two numbers is your margin for that decision.
Notes
- The project yardages are rough. They vary hugely with size, gauge and yarn weight, and they are here for the "roughly, could I?" question rather than as requirements. Use your own figure when you have one.
- Record partial balls honestly. A stash of full skeins is easy and a stash of half-used ones is what everybody actually has. Weigh a partial ball and scale the yardage — grams are far easier to measure than yards.
- Costs are optional and per-skein. Cost per yard is worked out only over the yarn whose cost you have entered, so a half-filled column does not quietly distort it.
- Export before you clear anything. Browser storage is not a backup — it goes when site data is cleared, and it does not follow you to another device.
How to use
- Add each ball with its yarn, colourway and dye lot.
- Record partial balls honestly — weigh them and scale the yardage.
- Pick a project and say how much it has to match.
- Export to CSV, because browser storage is not a backup.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have enough yarn for a sweater?
Not a question your stash total can answer. A garment needs its yardage in one yarn and ideally one dye lot, so the useful figure is the largest single matching block, not the sum. On a realistic ten-ball stash of 1,651 yards the largest single dye lot was 440 — the total says yes to a 1,000-yard sweater and the honest query says no.
How much does a stash total overstate things?
On the worked example, by a factor of 3.8. It will differ for your stash, which is why the tool shows the total, the largest single yarn and the largest single dye lot side by side rather than picking one. The gap between them is the interesting number.
Does the dye lot really matter that much?
On a large plain piece, yes. Two balls of the same yarn from different lots are visibly different in daylight, and the difference lands across a whole sleeve where nobody can miss it. It cannot be blocked out. If you are alternating rows between two balls anyway — the standard fix — then the by-yarn figure is the one to use.
Which matching rule should I pick?
It is a property of the project rather than the stash. A plain single-colour garment needs one dye lot. A striped or colourwork piece can mix lots within one yarn. A genuinely scrappy blanket can use the whole stash honestly. The tool asks instead of guessing because getting this wrong is the whole failure mode.
How do I record a partial ball?
Weigh it and scale. Grams are far easier to measure accurately than yards, so if a 100g ball holds 220 yards then 43g of it is about 95 yards. A stash of tidy full skeins is a fiction; partial balls are what everyone actually owns and leaving them out defeats the point.
Is my stash data uploaded anywhere?
No. It lives in this browser's local storage — no account, nothing sent. The trade is that it is not a backup: clearing site data removes it and it does not follow you to another device, so export the CSV if you care about it.
Why is cost per yard sometimes missing?
Because it is computed only across the yarn whose cost you have actually entered. A half-filled cost column would otherwise quietly divide a partial total by the full yardage and report a figure that is too low.
Are the project yardages accurate?
They are rough, deliberately. Real requirements vary hugely with size, gauge and yarn weight, so treat them as answering "roughly, could I?" rather than as requirements. Enter your own figure whenever you have one from a pattern.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged, or stored.