Peace of Mind Organizing

Ravelry: The greatest organizational tool for knitters

18 November 2008

I heart Ravelry. I absolutely love it. If you’re a knitter and you don’t know about Ravelry, or you don’t belong to it, click on the link the previous sentence and sign up. Just do it. Come back and read why I love it. But right now, go join.

What the heck is Ravelry? It’s essentially a social networking site for knitters and crocheters. To be honest, that doesn’t necessarily sound like something I’d adore. But Ravelry is more than a community of knitters. It’s an awesome database. People list their knitting projects and post photos and advice. If you’re looking to knit something, you have a huge searchable library at your fingertips.

It’s more than that, though. There are forums for people with similar interests, from lovers of the TV show The Office to knitters who have poodles to knitters in one city to supporters of a political candidate. You can talk about anything. And the undercurrent is the love of yarn.

You can also post your inventory of yarn and tools so that you know at a glance what you have. If you’re in a yarn store and have an internet connection through a smartphone (or if the yarn store will let you use their computer, which they often will), you can check to see if you need to buy a particular size of needles or see how many balls of a certain yarn you have. And that’s still just the tip of the iceberg.

Let me give you an example of how I used Ravelry last week.

My hands were cold. My 100-year-old house has radiator heat and it takes awhile for it to warm up in the morning. I decided I’d like to knit some fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm while typing. So I went to Ravelry and searched on “Fingerless gloves.” I was presented with no fewer than 942 different fingerless glove projects. These were all gloves that people in Ravelry had knitted and posted about.

I decided on Fetching, a popular, free pattern from knitty.com. 8300 Ravelers have made Fetching. I’ve seen them knit up in real life and liked them.

Then I had to decide on a yarn. I didn’t want to go out and buy yarn. But I didn’t already own the yarn that the pattern called for (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran). So on Ravelry, I searched the yarn database for Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, a wool/cashmere blend, and learned about the properties of that yarn. I learned that Aran weight is the same as Worsted weight and I took a look at the worsted weight yarn in my stash (easy to do since my stash is well organized). I found a single leftover ball of Plymouth Suri Merino, a blend of alpaca and merino wool.

Then I was able to look to see if anyone had knit Fetching in Suri Merino, by searching the 8300 Fetching projects by yarn. Alas, no. But I was able to find that some folks had knit it in another alpaca/wool yarn very similar to Suri Merino and it worked out fine. So I went for it. And as soon as I add my Fetching project to my Ravelry notebook, there will be a Fetching project there made from Suri Merino.

I don’t have the yarn knowledge to have been able to do that without Ravelry. In the past I would have gone to my local yarn store to ask, but since my goal was not to have to buy yarn, my purpose might have been defeated.

I’m typing this with toasty warm hands and wrists in my new Fetching, which took just a couple of evenings. Here’s a photo.

Have I convinced you to at least check out Ravelry if you’re a knitter? Like so many social networking tools, it can be a time drain. But it needn’t be if you use it just for the fabulous and powerful databases. If you do join, check out my notebook and feel free to make me your friend. My Ravelry name is kramerscout.

Tagged with: knitting, ravelry, social networking, yarn

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