Ravelry: where my stitches at?™

 The Numbers:

2,015,094 members - 6,505,596 projects - 269,692 patterns & 82,687 of them free!

 
If that doesn't impress you, find somebody who knits.. There's a high chance they will be a member of this website.. And there is a very high chance they will tell you Ravelry is the greatest crafting website ever!

Ravelry.com

How did this all start? Jessica Forbes, a knitter and blogger who was tired of the unorganized and chaotic knitting communities out there, and her husband Casey, a Web-developer who was tired of programming Java, decided to create this community in 2007. It started as a small, closed off community, but popularity grew fast and thousands of people were waiting to join. The couple was in desperate need of money, and Ravelry fans donated $71,000 to help keep up the site. Since then, it grew and turned into something no knitter or crocheter would ever want to miss again.


Today, the website is managed by a small team of four extremely creative and talented people:
Jessica & Casey (Founders), Mary-Heather (VP of Operations) and Sarah (Community Support).

Ravelry.com

But, Ravelry is so much more than just a free site for knitters and crocheters..
Let me try to describe it in its main points:

It's a extremely helpful Organizer! 

Ravelry.com

Members can keep track of everything in their notebook. They can catalog their projects with details about pattern, yarn, needles, modifications, how long it took to make and more. It's possible to save patterns they want to knit in the future in a queue-list, to add patterns to a favorites-list and to catalog all of them after whatever label they want. It's possible to create a library of owned knitting & crocheting books and magazines and to check out all of their featured patterns online. People can keep track of their blog posts and even link them to their project pages.

It's a Database!

Ravelry.com

I don't even know where to start to describe their insane database! I don't think people would be able to really understand until they signed up. All of it is carefully organized by volunteers and absolutely everything is linked and cross referenced to everything else.

Ravelry.com

I can click on a pattern and see numbers of already finished projects; I see a variety of suggested yarns, which have been used as alternatives to the pattern's instructions; I can see people's comments, modifications, ratings and so much more. I click on a specific yarn and see everything that has ever been knit with it by ravelers. I have three balls of yarn left over from knitting a pullover and don't know what to do with them? I type in the yardage and yarn weight and get every possible pattern I can use for it! The options and possibilities are endless.

Social Network! 

Ravelry.com

More than 23,000 groups and forums allow people to interact with other knitters and crocheters from around the world. Members can ask questions when they need help with a pattern, exchange experiences about different projects and techniques, share pictures of their cats and talk about how they manage to keep their recent yarn purchase a secret from their husbands. They can follow their friends' activities, recent projects, hand spun yarns or favorites. I have so many nice and creative people from so many different places in my friends list - Germany, England, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Bulgaria, France, Australia - It's really interesting to see the different types of yarn and knitting styles people from different areas use.

Designers can sign up as well and showcase and sell their patterns with only a tiny cut taken by Ravelry.

You can watch the Radar and see new projects pop up the second they were finished.

It's not possible to accurately describe it; I tried, but there is really no end to the awesomeness of Ravelry.

Tomorrow I'll introduce you to some of my favorite projects from people on Ravelry! 

You do not want to miss that!