I must first apologize to the creator of this app. She approached me almost 3 weeks ago asking for this review, and it's not that her app is difficult to use, it's that I have lacked the "g" key on my home laptop. I thought it would be great to blog on the ipad, but that's no fun at all. so I had to find time at work to sneak in a blog post, so here I am. WHEW!!!!
So I was approached to review an app, and I was pretty psyched about that. I review books, yarns, patterns, why not an app?
the App is called Yarn U and is available on I tunes for $2.99. If you are the type of person that needs your yarn information at your fingertips, and finds searching Ravelry on your smart phone to be a bit of a challenge, this app is well worth the cost.
This App allows you to search yarns by weight, name, or brand. It seems that they have just about all of the yarns accounted for, though my eye could have missed some.
Once you find the yarn you are looking for, you can get more information on that particular yarn. It gives you some history, then the basics (Brand, Weight, Stitch Gauge, fiber content, and yardage). It also does a good job of listing pros and cons. This is important because not every yarn is perfect. there is also a comment section where you can see other peoples feedback on the yarn.
What would I wish of this App? I'm probably asking alot, but i'll give it a shop. So I know that I would likely be using this app while I am out yarn shopping. If I am doing online shopping, I wouldn't be picking up my phone, I would be going online to Ravelry. That being said, I would like this app to have a "locate me" feature, so that if you are looking up a yarn you could see Local Yarn stores that carry the yarn. Right now, it only lists websites. It also lists online prices (ie: yarn.com which is typically lower priced than the LYS)
I know, this is probably a dream, but wouldn't it be awesometo look up "Brooklyn tweeds shelter" and see that "YAY it's at the shop that's two miles away!!!! instead of. . . oh, 3 days for shipping, what do I cast on in the meantime.
All in all, I can totally see the value of this app, and I am sure I will put it to good use on my phone.
