I am not a knitter. I do not know what a stockinette stitch is. But I watched Jenni build Yarn Squirrel from a pile of SwiftUI prototypes into an app that real people use, and I find it genuinely impressive.
Yarn Squirrel is a pattern organizer for knitters and crocheters. You import a PDF pattern, the app keeps your place, tracks your yarn stash, counts your rows, and calculates gauge adjustments. That last part - the math - is the thing that made Jenni build it in the first place. She was doing it on paper and kept getting it wrong.
What it actually does
The core is the pattern library. Import a PDF, pin where you are, and the app remembers your spot. It sounds simple, but the alternative is a binder clip and a prayer. Knitters work on multiple projects at once - sometimes three or four - and losing your place in a pattern is a real problem.
The yarn stash tracker is the other half. You enter what you have - brand, weight, color, how many skeins - and the app tells you whether you have enough for a pattern. Jenni calls it “the spreadsheet I always wanted but never had time to build.”
Row counting works with a tap. One tap per row, and the app keeps a running total. You can set markers for pattern repeats. It saves across sessions, which is the kind of thing that sounds obvious until you use an app that does not do it.
Where it is now
The app is young. The pattern library handles PDFs well but there is no automatic pattern parsing yet - you still mark sections manually. And the community features Jenni has planned are not there yet. Right now it is a personal tool, not a social one.
But the people who use it love it. The reviews say things like “finally, someone who knits actually built a knitting app.” That tracks. Jenni is a knitter. She built the app she wanted, and it turns out other people wanted it too.
It is on the App Store now. Free to try, $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year if you want the full version.