Brainstorm "inventory" sharing

[jlitzwilson]

The #crafters-anonymous group is composed of individuals who each own a collection of too many (or not enough?) craft supplies that we house in our meatspace homes and apartments. We also start projects where we might need a small quantity of a material (e.g. yarn or fabric for accent pieces of a project), and could use some of another person's stash rather than purchasing more. Save the planet and all that. It'd be nice to have some place where we could offer up inventory taking up space in our houses, or request an item someone might have lying around. I don't really know if this is a Slack integration or a separate thing entirely, just starting the thinking here since we all talk in Slack.

[smashwilson]

/cc @k0d3k1ttn @Llynmir @Tuxedocat0 for ideas about how we'd like this to work. 💡 (Feel free to @ anyone else in #crafters-anonymous if they have GitHub accounts and would like to weigh in!)

[Llynmir]

Maybe a repository of pictures of available leftover supplies with an indication of who they are with and a broad category (yarn, cloth, paper, etc). I am not sure how well that would integrate into slack? Maybe a post in the channel when people upload new items?

[kyrabusser]

Ravelry has an API, if people already have accounts with them: https://www.ravelry.com/api

[smashwilson]

@kyrabusser oh cool. ✨

I mostly know Ravelry as a site to share knitting patterns and such. How much "inventory tracking" functionality does it have?

[kyrabusser]

It's called "stash" in Ravelry, and it's primarily intended for yarn. You can keep track of how much, upload pictures, link it up to yarn information stored in their DB, etc: https://www.ravelry.com/wiki/pages/StashSection

It might not be ideal if the goal is to support a wider array of non-yarn crafts, or if people don't want the hassle of uploading stuff to a slightly-heavier-weight additional system.

[Llynmir]

Until someone that knows both crafting and programming gets around to programming a larger repository, I think that this is a good interim solution for yarn.

Perhaps we could get a list of Ravelry user names for slack, sort of like with peoples' twitch codes?

[smashwilson]

Perhaps we could get a list of Ravelry user names for slack, sort of like with peoples' twitch codes?

This bit would be pretty trivial, I can set that up for you now 😄

[smashwilson]

Done:

!ravelry - Return one of your ravelrys at random.
!ravelry <query> - Return one of your ravelrys that matches <query>.
!ravelry @<user> - Return one of <user>'s ravelrys at random.
!ravelry @<user> <query> - Return one of <user>'s ravelrys that matches <query>.
!setravelry <user>: <source> - Set user's ravelry to <source>.
!setravelry: <source> - Set your own ravelry to <source>.

Anybody should be able to set their own; admins can set accounts for others.