What is StashBot?

Flipping Fantastic! That’s what.

I follow Hannah Fettig aka KnitBot on Instagram and reccently saw a post to announce that she had released her Stashbot idea as an app for IOS.  Originally, you could purchase Stashbot as a paper version from woolly stockists but the app version takes it to a whole new level of portability.

So what can Stashbot do?

Basically, Stashbot has been developed to make it easier for you to work out the average yarn requirements for certain, everyday garments in different sizes.

 

 

 

 

The first thing to note is that it’s based on tension/guage in other words the number of stitches knitted per inch or per 10cm’s.  For example a standard aran weight yarn will knit to a tension of 18 stitches per 10cm’s or 4.5 stitches per inch.

Please note – that if you are using cm’s your yarn requirements will be displayed in metres and if you’re using stitches per inch it will be shown in yards.

Using this tension we can then check how much yarn on average, it will take to knit our chosen project in stocking stitch.  The app suggests that you should reference the next size up for more textured knits.

At present the projects include

• Vest/Shrug
• Cropped sweater, 3/4 sleeve
• Average length sweater
• Long sweater/tunic
• Hat
• Mittens
• Scarf/shawl/infinity cowl
• Socks

There is an extensive range of sizes included on the app.

• Sweaters in sizes from 16″ to 62″
• Hats, mittens and socks from baby to XL adult
• Scarves in small, medium and large and

Here you can see that if I wanted to knit a tunic for your average size two year old, with my standard aran weight tension, I’m going to need approximately 360 metres of yarn.  As I want to add a bit of texture with some moss stitch and maybe the odd cable I look to the next size up, this advises that my project will take 420 metres.  I have 600 metres of yarn to use up, so looking at the requirements for a hat for myself I can see that I should easily be able to complete both projects.  To be on the safe side I’d knit the sweater first though 😉

 

The lovely people at Stashbot welcome questions and feedback and have even incorporated a ‘contact us’ button at the top of the page.  I, being my usual annoying self, found myself contacting the Stashbot team almost immediately to champion the addition of a super chunky, 9 stitches to 10cm tension.  I’m happy to say I received a reply within a couple of hours to say they were already working on possible updates, yay!

I wonder if they’ll include a crochet element too?

Unfortunately, for those of you non iphone people, the app is currently only available on IOS but there is an email subscription that you can sign up to for notification when the app becomes available on Android here.

Stashbot costs $4.99 to download from the itunes Store.

I LOVE IT!

Happy Knitting!