indie dyers

10/31/2020

Add New Yarns With Photos to Ravelry: A Guide For Indie Dyers

This guide has been written out here by this humble indie yarn enthusiast/supporter on Etsy and Ravelry with no affiliation to either whatsoever, to help out not just ever-amazing Five Wise Owls on Etsy but ALL the indie dyers who’ve been having this baffling issue on Ravelry: you attempt to add photos to accompany your newly added yarns, but are somehow left with an ever-frozen loading bar, no matter how small the image size.

The solution is not at all intuitive. Essentially, to get around the ever-frozen photo uploader for new yarns, you need to first add the new yarn without photos, then add this new yarn to your Stash (or your Projects) to add photos. All the facepalms, ‘eh? Here’s how.

  1. From any page on Ravelry, hover your mouse in the upper right over 'my notebook,' and then click on 'contributions' with the yellow pencil icon.
  2. At the second drop-down menu that says 'Add a yarn to Ravelry,' click the "v" down-carrot arrow and select the first choice of the three, 'A yarn that I spin/dye/paint and sell,' then click 'do it' to the right of it.
  3. A window will pop up that says “Just to be completely sure... search our yarns to make sure that you aren't adding a duplicate yarn to Ravelry.” Enter your brand name such as Five Wise Owls and click 'search,' and it will show you all the yarns you've added so far. Click the box at the bottom that says 'Add a new yarn to Ravelry.'
  4. There you will see the big blank template with extensive fields to fill in. Since for each of your yarns you may offer many colorway options, you may choose to leave some of these fields blank for now--you can always go back later to fill in more. NOTE that you won't be able to add the photo just yet, this is ok. When you're done, click at the bottom 'save yarn.'
  5. Once again hover your mouse in the upper right over ‘my notebook’, and this time click on ‘stash’ with the basket icon.
  6. In the center panel toward the upper left, click the green ‘+ add to stash’ button.
  7. This brings up four fields. For “Where was this yarn originally purchased?” choose the third option ‘Online store’ since this is where you sell it, fill in the rest, and for the fourth question “Online store information (optional)” put your shop name in the ‘Store name’ box, and put your Etsy shop link in the ‘Address (URL)’ box, then click ‘Continue.'
  8. The page will say “Stashing a new yarn: (new-colorway-name) from (your-company-name)”, and will give you a search box that says ‘Search yarns.' Enter your yarn brand and new colorway name here and click ‘search.'
  9. When you see the new colorway that you’d named in step 4, click the ‘> choose this yarn’ button to the right of it.
  10. See the ‘add photos’ link in the upper left, above the ‘no featured photo’ box? WOOHOO! It took all these steps, but there she is! Click it, upload photos from any of a variety of sources, and click ‘finished with photos’ at the bottom right when you’re done.
  11. Then fill in any/all fields that you like. While most of these may be irrelevant for your purposes and can be left blank, definitely fill in the sixth field down--‘Purchased at’ with the link icon—with your Etsy shop link. You may also want to give yourself the five yellow stars rating, because of course.
  12. Then at the bottom you can either click ‘save stash,' or if you’ll be adding more colorways it also says "Adding lots of yarns at once? Save your changes and..." where you can click ‘go to photos,' ‘add a colorway,' or ‘add new yarn.'
  13. At the very bottom of your Stash page in slightly smaller print, beneath 'edit or correct this yarn', it says "Help! Ravelry needs a pretty photo." Click this, then click on the best photo of your new yarn to represent it which posts it on the yarn's page itself, and save. BOOM.
  14. To test it out, go to any main Ravelry page and click 'yarns' in the upper left, then search for it. It should be there with the photo.

That’s it! Good luck to all the indie dyers out there, WE LOVE YOU, and let me know anytime if you have any questions.

Warmly,
Stace a.k.a. zonal on Etsy and Ravelry