Today, I have a lesson for you, my friends. It’s very simple: enter your yarn data into Ravelry. Your full yarn data. Including the colourway (and yes, even dye lot, as useless as it often feels). Why, you may ask? Well, because you may find yourself in the following situation:
It’s been a year since you purchased the yarn. You’ve made a few projects with it but they were mostly improvised so you didn’t bother noting the colourways down. Who cared anyway? You had so much of this stuff that you didn’t know what to do with it. And then, because you had so much of it, you might decide to start a blanket with it. And then (do you see it yet?), you will most certainly (and completely unexpectedly), run out of it. The shop where you had bought it originally will not carry the same colour anymore (because it’s a small shop and they order things haphazardly, and even if you asked them they probably wouldn’t know what those two shades of gray were that they happened to have last winter). The yarn company in question will offer 9 (nine!) different shades of gray all of which will be very similar to the one you (don’t) have (anymore). This will make it impossible to tell from the photos alone which one you need. Especially when you take into account the fact that the same yarn looks different in different photos (see for example the colour 8400 here and here). And displayed on different computer screens. And then all you will be left with will be detective work and guessing.
After a while, you will place your order, from two different yarn shops in two different European countries (both different from the one you currently live in), cross your fingers, and hope for the best.
So there you go, my friends. Enter your yarn data into Ravelry.
p.s. Special thanks go to Cascade’s website for their great overview of yarns and colourways, and Laine et Tricot for their useful note on the shades of Cascade grays (also, they sell the yarn much cheaper than any of the other European shops I found, too bad they did not have the colours I needed!).
p.p.s. I’ll keep you posted when they arrive…
fridica 
I guess I’m a good girl then. I always enter all details possible. I might be a yarn nerd but I always think I might need those details in future…
Hugs xxx
May I also recommend that you use the “stored in” field too. When you have more than 1 box, (or perhaps maybe…..erm…..12) you need to know which box your yarn is in if you want to find it without emptying all your yarn on the floor.
Oh haha, my stash is not that big… :) I guess I’m still somewhat under control then :)
I always do that myself for that exact same reason… plus it makes things much easier to find when I use the “stored in” field. I hope that you find the right color!
It also works the other way: you may be the saver of another knitter as well :)
Have a great week end!
I do that, because of the reasons you list. But it would be great if Ravelry had a leftover/swap yarn thingy: so that if you run out of just a little yarn to complete your project, you may link to those who’ve worked with that same yarn but haven’t used it up, and work out a yarn swap of some sort.
Hm, I’m a bit confused now, i thought that did exist (the “will sell or swap” option for yarn) – or perhaps you are thinking of something more specific?
That is good advice, for sure. I have SO MUCH YARN I would have to catalog, but maybe I can try to keep up with the new stuff. I’ve definitely had to guess and cross my fingers about dye lots when I ran out of yarn on a couple of projects.
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