My Story
Your stash, your patterns and your row count, in your pocket since 2013. Thirteen years, one person, and one rebuild that had to happen.
You are standing in a yarn shop with a skein in your hand, and you cannot remember whether you already have four of them at home, or how much that cardigan actually wanted. Ravelry knows. Ravelry has never made an app of its own, and in 2013 it was a website built for a desktop computer, so the answer stayed at home with the computer. I am Marco Nissen, a German developer living in Trondheim, and I built Stash2Go so you could ask from the shop floor instead. Thirteen years on it comes wherever you make things: phone, tablet, laptop, watch, even the television.
It begins
I do not knit. I learned at school and it never took, and I have tried the neighbouring crafts since: a rigid heddle loom I never quite got on with, crochet that turned out not to be my thing, and sewing, which I like and still do. My wife knits, and for years she dyed yarn under her own label, Luxx Yarns, so the craft was in the house even when the needles were not in my hands. That is how I found Ravelry, and an app called Wooly that already connected to it. I liked Wooly, and I thought: there is an API, I could build one too, and maybe make it better. Coding is my knitting.
Stash2Go reached the App Store on 18 July 2013: your stash, your queue and your projects on the phone already in your project bag, instead of a desktop website pinched and zoomed at knit night. Eleven more updates followed before the year was out.
“Really enjoying this app. It's easy to use, nice to look at, and a really good option for Ravelry, so much more usable than the website. A must have app for knitters.”
App Store review, five stars, November 2013
Android, and a free way in
Android makers got the same app on Google Play, and in February a free, ad-supported Stash2Go Lite arrived so you could try it before paying. A first yarn shop finder turned up in the same stretch, for the times you want a shop rather than a pattern. Two apps to keep going now instead of one. That is where the later trouble started.
“This app gives me easy access to the best database in the world. I do not have a data plan for my iPad, so I love that it keeps my data when I leave wifi.”
App Store review, four stars, August 2014
Counters on your wrist
The Apple Watch app put four project counters on your wrist, so you could count a row without putting your needles down or picking up your phone.
“This app just keeps getting better. Now the Watch App shows the four counters for your current projects right on your wrist. I had been hoping for that.”
App Store review, five stars, July 2015
The television, and yarn pooling
Stash2Go arrived on Apple TV, for anyone who reads a chart from the sofa, and the Pooling Generator worked out how a variegated skein would pool before you cast on.
“Very useful application for navigating Ravelry, organising stash, and photos. I also appreciate how quick the developer responds.”
App Store review, five stars, July 2016
Growing up, and a review
Offline mode arrived, for the plane and for the cabin with no signal. Search got better, and project photos, forums and messages came with it. In June, Crochet Spot reviewed it and called it “an excellent choice for Ravelers”, while naming three things it could not do: search patterns by yardage, follow a long forum thread, or keep track of the needles and hooks in your tin.
“This is my go-to app for my crochet projects. I love it.”
App Store review, five stars, June 2017
A new logo
Makers voted on a new logo, and the pink yarn ball won. They picked the face the app still wears today.
A second app
I shipped a new app, Stash2Go II, in November. It was meant to be the future and it was not ready to be. It did less than the app it replaced, and the reviews said so plainly. Both apps stayed on the store.
The quiet years
Updates slowed to a trickle. Five of them in five years. Keeping several apps in step had become more than I could carry on my own, and they drifted apart. Stash2Go still worked, but I was not giving it the care it deserved. Makers kept using it anyway, kept filing their yarn and counting their rows in it, and kept writing to tell me what was broken. Quietly, in the background, I started again.
“The only thing I used this for is the row counters, and now even that doesn't work.”
App Store review, one star, December 2024
Rebuilt
In November I rebuilt Stash2Go II from nothing. One app now, the same on the phone in your project bag, the tablet on the sofa and the browser at your desk, with the television along for the ride. The aim was never a longer feature list. It was an app I could keep tending on my own, so the quiet years would not come round again.
The year it caught up
Something new to open every week or two, all year.
Your counters stopped losing their place. The row counters that stopped working for that reader in 2024 now agree across phone, watch and browser, so a count survives being interrupted, and survives the interruption after that.
What can I make with the yarn I already have? The oldest question in the craft, and Stash Matchmaker started answering it from the yarn already in your stash. Everything keeps working with no signal at all, too.
A map of 17,764 yarn shops. That shop finder from 2014 grew into a map of its own in February, at yarn-shops.com, with opening hours, photos, the brands each one carries, and a route planner for stringing several of them into a yarn crawl. No account, no cookies, no tracking, and it is the same map the app uses.
Three old gaps, closed. All three things that 2017 review said the app could not do now work: yardage in search, forums that survive a long thread, and a place for every needle and hook you own.
And some things still being tried out. A reader that follows a pattern PDF row by row, and a set of tools for weavers, both arrived in beta and are still finding their feet. They are off until you turn them on.
“I've tried others and keep coming back to this app. The developer is quick to fix bugs that are reported. Love the project timeline display. UI can be as simple or complex as you'd like.”
App Store review, five stars, March 2026
Still being written
Stash2Go II is still being written, and as many ideas come from makers in the Ravelry group as from any plan. Ravelry lists it among the apps that connect to Ravelry. It is free to download and use, with a couple of paid extras for anyone who wants them. There is no team behind it, no investors and no roadmap meeting. There is me, in Trondheim, thirteen years in and still at it.
Come and tell me what you would like it to do.
