Building a Pattern Library: What 324 Saved Patterns Revealed

Okay. Where did we leave off?

In the last post, I was heading into Ravelry with high hopes. Claude had suggested that, if I’d been saving patterns to my Ravelry library as I downloaded them, the data I needed might already be there — exportable, clean, and ready to drop into Airtable. That was a very exciting possibility.

So, I went to check.

I had 324 patterns saved in my Ravelry library!

What was I thinking?! Well, in my defense, I joined Ravelry in 2008 (that’s right, I’m practically OG), so that’s only 15-20 patterns a year on average. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with saving digital files to go back and peruse, but …

Three hundred and twenty-four patterns are a lot. Not 50. Not even 100. Three hundred and twenty-four patterns that I have, at various points in my life, looked at and thought: “yes, I want to make that someday.”

“Someday” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in my crafting life.

Here’s what I know about myself after staring at that number: I am an optimist when it comes to future-me’s available time and ambition. Future-me is apparently going to knit 300+ sweaters, shawls, socks, and accessories while also running a business, having a life, and sleeping occasionally. Current-me needed a reality check.

👉 Surprise, it is not realistic to make 324 patterns in this lifetime!

So, I made a decision: I would start with 15. Fifteen patterns that I genuinely, right now, actually want to make. Not “someday” patterns. Not aspirational patterns. Patterns I could realistically see myself starting in the near future, especially if it turns out that I already have the appropriate yarn for them.

I went through my patterns from all the different places where I had downloaded them — my computer, Google Drive, Apple Books, and yes, the Ravelry library — and I looked for patterns that genuinely excited me right now. Not patterns I thought I should make. Not patterns I bought because they were on sale. Patterns I actually want to sit down and start.

I also deliberately chose a mix:

• A mix of project types — hats, fingerless gloves, socks, sweaters, a shawl, a scarf

• A mix of crafts — both knit and crochet patterns made the cut

• A mix of complexity — some straightforward, some that will genuinely challenge me in their intricacies or techniques that are new to me.

Fifteen feels manageable and real. And honestly, 15 might still be optimistic, but it’s a number I can actually work with.

Here’s something genuinely useful I discovered: Ravelry lets you export your library as an Excel spreadsheet. The file includes pattern names, designers, craft type, and other details — which sounds like exactly what I needed.

The catch? The links in that export go to the pattern’s page on Ravelry, not to the actual PDF of the pattern. So, I couldn’t use the exported link to go directly to the actual pattern files that I’d need when I actually sat down to make something.

The workaround that made sense: upload the actual PDF files to a Google Drive folder, set each one to “anyone with the link can view,” and then paste that shareable link into my Airtable Pattern Link column. A little more work upfront, but now every pattern link in my system opens the actual pattern from any device — which is the whole point.

👉 Google Drive is the permanent home. Airtable holds the link.

Once I had my 15 patterns identified, I needed to extract the data from each one — yarn weight, yardage for a medium size (which I can adjust as needed but should give me an idea of more than how much yarn I will actually need), hook or needle size, and so on. Claude can read PDFs and pull out exactly this kind of structured information, so I uploaded them in batches of 5-10 files per chat session.

This worked well — right up until it didn’t. Claude has an image upload limit per conversation, so after 10 patterns, I hit the ceiling and had to start a new chat. The fix was simple: I just started the new chat with a summary of the column structure and the rules we’d established (yardage for medium size, flag any unusual details and estimates in Notes, etc.), then attached the next batch of PDFs. It picked right up.

There was one small hiccup: the yardage numbers from the second batch didn’t upload cleanly into Airtable when I imported the CSV file. I’m not entirely sure why — it may have been a formatting issue in that particular export — but it was only 5 patterns, and entering the numbers manually from the readable chart that Claude had created and was right in front of me in the chat took about two minutes. Not worth troubleshooting when the fix was faster than the diagnosis would have been.

👉 Enter now. Refine later. (If you’ve been following along, you know this is my mantra now.)

I now have 15 patterns in Airtable, each with:

• Pattern name

• A link to the actual PDF in Google Drive

• Craft type (knit, crochet, or both)

• Type of project (sweater, hat, socks, etc.)

• Status (all currently “Want to make”)

• Number of yarns required

• Yarn 1 weight and yardage (medium size)

• Yarn 2 weight and yardage, where applicable

• Hook or needle size

• Notes (flags for estimated yardage, unusual construction, multi-yarn requirements, etc.)

The photo column is there and waiting — I’ll add those as I go. And the pattern link column means that clicking the link in any row opens the actual pattern PDF file. That alone has already made this feel different from every previous attempt at organization I’ve made.

The multi-yarn patterns got their own columns: Yarn 2 Weight and Yarn 2 Yds sit right next to Yarn 1, and the Number of Yarns Required field means I can filter instantly for patterns I can start with a single yarn versus patterns that need more planning. That’s already useful.

The pattern library exists. The yarn inventory exists (well, it’s almost complete, and I made great progress over the weekend -- I’ve got only a bag or two of yarns left to go through). They are two separate tables sitting in the same Airtable base, waiting to be introduced to each other.

Next up: figuring out how to use Airtable’s linked records feature to connect a pattern to the yarns in my stash. Once that’s in place, I should be able to build a view that answers the question I’ve been asking since Post 1:

👉 Do I already have the yarn for this?

I have a feeling the answers are going to surprise me.

See you back here soon.

🧶