I Ruv Ravelry

Raverly (http://www.ravelry.com/) is an online knitting/crocheting community. Why do I love thee? For starters, you can search for patterns – both free and for purchase – via different search criteria such as craft (knit vs. crochet), category (baby, hats, scarves), keywords including names of books, magazines, and designers, and user rating. When you find a pattern you like, you get the basic information about the pattern from the designer such as the type of yarn they used, how much yarn the project requires, and the needle/hook size. The kick-a$$ part of Ravelry (yes, crafts associated with granny can actually kick a$$), is that you can view the projects of users who have used the same pattern. Why am I so jazzed about this? This is helpful because it lets you see what the project looks like using different types of yarn. Maybe I can only afford the $4 yarn and not the $60 yarn the designer recommends; with Ravelry I can see what other yarns people have used and what size hook/needle they ended up using for that particular yarn.

Users can also provide a rating to indicate the difficulty of the project as well as their overall happiness with it. What’s really helpful is when users post comments about their projects. I was once stuck on a row in a project and after reading the comments of someone else working on the same project was able to confirm that there was a mistake in the pattern. If users blog about their projects, they can also provide links to their blogs or simply comment on other users’ projects.

All the useful things to a knitter/crocheter are linked in Ravelry. For example, for any project I can click a link for the yarn used in the project, find out what people have to say about the yarn, and also toss in my two cents. From the yarn’s page, I can also look at every project made using that yarn or search for any patterns that used that yarn. I can view all projects made by any user. (It’s like show-and-tell without the pressure of speaking in public.)

Every Ravelry user has a notebook where they can keep track of their projects. For each project, you can add your comments, update your progress, and add pictures. Did I mention that Ravelry links to Flickr so you can link to your already uploaded pictures? When you’re browsing through patterns and projects, you can tag your favorites and also add projects to your queue. You can reorder your queue and even add details about the yarn you want to use, who you’re making the project for, needle size, and so much more. My queue is long and constantly growing and getting re-ordered.

As with many other social networking sites, Ravelry has its own forums and groups. I actually found a group of knitters who also run. My kind of peeps.

Every time I think to myself, “I wish Ravlery did X”, I find out they already do. I’m sure there’s plenty more the site has to offer that I haven’t discovered yet. In a way I don’t want to discover any more of its features because it’ll mean I’m online when I could actually be working on a project.