A PDF you bought is yours, and Yarn Squirrel is happy to be where you keep it.
Three ways in
- Share it from wherever it is — Mail, Files, Safari, your browser’s downloads — and pick Yarn Squirrel from the share sheet
- Import from Settings or the Library, which opens the Files picker
- Pick several at once — the picker takes a multiple selection
Reviewing what you picked
Choosing more than one file gives you a Review Import screen listing them, so you can deselect anything that came along by accident. Anything you already have is marked Already Imported, so a second pass over the same folder doesn’t create duplicates.
Then tap Import and it tells you how many it’s bringing in.
It looks for the pattern on Ravelry
While importing, Yarn Squirrel searches Ravelry for the pattern the PDF appears to be, using the text inside it. You get one of three outcomes:
- A confident match — it shows you what it found. If you already own it there, it says In Your Library
- Several possibilities — listed under Other Matches on Ravelry for you to choose from
- Nothing — No matches found on Ravelry, and you can Search Ravelry Again with different words
Accepting a match links the two, so your PDF gains Ravelry’s gauge, yardage, needle sizes and suggested yarns. See Linking a PDF to its Ravelry pattern.
You never have to accept. Import as New Pattern creates it as your own with no Ravelry connection — “Create a new local pattern without linking to Ravelry” — and Skip leaves the matching for another day.
There’s also an option to Add to Ravelry Library while you’re there, which puts the pattern in your library on Ravelry too. It’s off unless you ask for it.
This works without a Ravelry account
The matching uses Ravelry’s public data, so you get the same offer with or without an account. Only the add to my Ravelry library part needs one.
Where the file itself lives
That’s a separate decision, and it matters more than it sounds — see Where Yarn Squirrel keeps your PDFs.