I’ve recommended it to many people over the years, mostly elders who hadn’t considered the internet being that useful, and usually they’re like, “aw? A website? No thanks, it’s not necessary”. Which is fine even if internally I was like “plsssss no it’s so good”.
A lot of gen-z are getting into fiber crafting and that is exciting.
So, here’s a little intro
This is the homepage, after making an account
Up on the top right is your notebook, which you’ll probably visit the most because it contains all of the tools for organizing your projects.
That’s your notebook, on the left bar are your various tools. Projects are lined up neatly on the rest of the screen. There’s a Handspun tab for spinners, Stash is where you organize your yarns, uQeue is where you list upcoming projects, Favorites is where you can save and organize your favorite projects/patterns, Needles & Hooks gives you a chart that you can fill in with what you already own, Library is a digital library of patterns and even representations of the physical books that you own.
Each of these can be customized, for example in favorites in there is a place to bundle them, so that if you wanted to say make a bundle of everything you want to knit as Christmas presents throughout the year, you can do that. In Queue you can link the called for yarn and the yarn you are going to use, linked from stash or otherwise, you can make notes on each entry. I will often note whether I need needles and what kind, so that if I drop by the store, the info I need is just a couple of clicks away. There is even a place in the stash to note where you got your yarn and how much it cost.
I’m not going much more deeper into that, but if ya’ll want me to do a post about specific tools let me know.
The most attractive part of Ravelry for me is easily searchable database of patterns.
If you click on the Patterns button at the top left of the homepage, it takes you here.
I typically go straight to pattern browser & advanced search through the link under the search bar.
The great part of this are the filters on the left. You can filter by category of clothing, if and how it’s in your notebook, by craft type, by it’s availability (like whether it’s free, downloadable, or purchased elsewhere), whether or not it has photos (because there are many self-published designers), by attributes such as shape, techniques, texture, and types of colorwork, by age, size, ease, fit, and gender, by weight of the yarn called for, by yardage required, by number of colors used, by pattern source, by needle size, by star rating, by difficulty, by origin of crochet terminology, and by language. There are many more search options after the main filters.
So for example if I had exactly 700 yards of worsted eight yarn in two colors, and I knew I wanted to make a scarf, using bobbles and colorwork, I could search that.
Not only that, but you can customize the filters to combine traits:
I could make my selections and hit advanced where I’ve circled in red and,
specify that I want merino, and cashmere, or silk, but not nylon. I still got 27 matches from that search, but that’s how big the database is.
And the same goes for the yarn tab at the top left of the homepage next to patterns. You can search through pretty much every yarn available, from red heart to indie fiber artists, using similar characteristics to narrow it down.
I hope someone found this useful and if you’re a knitter or crocheter, it’s seriously worth a look. I’m not very active lately, but It’s where I go for inspiration if nothing else.
Thank you for making this. I have a lot of newbie knitters and crocheters who still think Pinterest is the best place to find patterns
First, a note: I ask that people please reblog this to spread this since the tags are kinda unusable right now, especially when a post has external links within it.
Dreamwidth has been my main active posting platform for a year and a half now, and I’ve noticed a lot of bloggers talking about jumping ship over to DW with tumblr’s uhhhhhh current state of affairs.
But DW is kinda bland and boring if you’re too young to have been of the LiveJournal generation, and therefore don’t know where to look or start in order to build your friends list and find communities, so I’m going to do some of the legwork for you.
the_great_tumblr_purge: I made a dw community specifically for people jumping ship from tumblr to reconnect with each other.
addme: a friending community where you pimp yourself out and find other people with similar interests that you might want to see on your reading page.
addme_fandom: similar to above, only with a stronger emphasis on finding people based on your fandoms.
fandomcalendar: a community where you can find fandom events, such as big bangs, exchanges, challenges, bingos, etc. and other fandom communities that might suit your interests.
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
Also, go read the source policies and official Tumblr statements in addition to user analyses and reactions. It’s important to keep abreast of developments over time; staying informed is your power in this situation. Memes and reaction posts are funny and are a useful way to vent / provide commentary, but some of them create an inaccurate picture of what’s happening and should not be taken as evidence on their own of what developments have happened.
also i’ve seen a few people ask so i’mma post some instructions – backing up your blog is super easy
you need to be on desktop to do this though
go to blog settings
and click on that link, then all the way down the bottom of the page, under the old block list, is an ‘export blogname’ button. tumblr will have a think about it and email you about a half hour-hour or so later to let you know the backup is ready. then just go back to the blog settings page and download from there
(i did a backup about six weeks ago, which is why there’s already a link there – if you haven’t done a backup before, then you’ll just have the ‘export blogname’ button)
the download is a zip file which contains copies of all your posts, including all the media (images, music etc) you’ve posted, plus xml files containing copies of all the conversations you’ve had on tumblr’s im thing
i couldn’t see that you get copies of asks/fanmail/drafts so if those are important to you i’d suggest backing those up separately!
I'm Still Kicking 