Ewe Stash – Review
So there is a new iPhone app available for the crocheter or knitter called Ewe Stash (Treeness, LLC). First reaction, “Wee! A new app for crocheters and knitters. Have to have it!” Second reaction after seeing the $2.99 price, “Why do I need this?”
The goal of Ewe Stash is to give you the ability to easily manage your stash of yarn, needles and hooks from the comfort of your iPhone. In theory, this is a great idea. You’re cruising for patterns at a store and want to see what yarn you have that might work. In practice, I’m not so sure. Knowing how we crafters work, if we are in a yarn store looking at patterns, most likely we are going to buy the yarn that’s right in front of us. You can never, NEVER have too much yarn.
The other downer is populating the database with your stash, needles and hooks. If are hip enough to have an iPhone, my guess is that you are hip enough to be on Ravelry and have already populated your personal stash/needle/hook database there. The idea of doing it a second time…no thank you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a store and popped on the Ravelry site from my iPhone to look up patterns and stash information. Works for me.
Ewe Stash does allow you to have pictures for each of your stashed items, even your needles and hooks (Ravelry does not let you have pictures of your awesome wooden hooks), BUT you can’t enlarge them to see a closer view. You are stuck with the 3/8”x3/8” thumbnail picture. No thank you.
The final feature of Ewe Stash is “By linking Contacts, you can make sure that your stash never runs low.” Again, in theory this is a great idea. But what it means is that you have to add all of your favorite yarn stores to you iPhone Contacts. If you are proned to calling your yarn dealer in desperation (“Dude, I need some DK weight virgin wool in eggplant real bad.”) then this is a feature for you. Personally, I would rather yarn store contact information was stored in the app itself and not in my personal contacts.
Would I buy it if I didn’t need to use the app for writing a review? No.
What would make it worth the $2.99 price?
Enable zooming of stash pictures.
Yarn store contact information housed in app, not in Contacts.
Have a Wish List option. I would like to go to a yarn store, take a picture and store information on yarn I would like to have in the future.
Option to sort by color, not just weight, fiber and name.






Hi there! I’m the developer of Ewe Stash.
I’m really sorry that you didn’t enjoy it, and had to spend your own money to review it. I usually give promo codes to anyone wanting to review my apps.
I thought about sending you $3 in the mail to the address I found in your whois contact info for the doubletrebble.net domain. (And one of my friends dared me to do it.) But I thought I’d check first, to make sure this would be ok.
I can’t actually refund your credit card because Apple doesn’t give any customer financial information to developers.
You make a few fair observations in your review:
Ewe Stash stores some information that is redundant to the info in Ravelry. This is mainly because I’d written Ewe Stash for folks who might only own an iPod Touch and not have a Ravelry account (like me). Importing data from Ravelry should theoretically be possible, but I can’t say for certain since I don’t have an account there.
Image zooming, sorting by color, and having a wishlist are all good ideas for future updates. The wishlist in particular is a neat idea that I wish I’d thought of.
Having a separate in-app contacts database is something that I was going to do in the beginning, but after much thought and daily usage (about 3 weeks worth), I found that it was not a good idea. Also, creating a good re-implementation of the standard Contacts app is a non-trivial task.
Thanks for the review.
Best regards,
John
Thank you so much John for you comment.
I want you to know right now that I don’t want, and wouldn’t want a refund for the app. I think if I’m going to voice my opinion about your work, I should pay for the right to do so.
Please take all my comments with the best intentions. Though I may have gotten a little snarky, it was more to provoke discussion rather than for you to take it personally (but how could you not, it’s directed to your work).
It did spur a very good conversation on Ravelry (the iLove my iPhone group / See New App – Ewe Stash) that several other developers discussed larger issues with app development and sales. Highly recommended.
I hope that you take my thoughts, opinions and suggestions in the spirit in which they were written…to encourage an even better product so that can charge an even larger amount.
I have not deleted your app, nor do I intend too. I’ll be anxious to watch the updates and report on them.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks very much for the explanation. I do feel much better now.
I’m definitely in it for the long haul and I have many plans for future improvements for Ewe Stash.
Thanks,
John