Ravelry

Infobox Website
name = Ravelry
url = http://www.ravelry.com/


commercial = Yes
type = Social Network
registration = Free (invitation required)
author = Casey and Jessica Forbes
owner = Ravelry, LLC

Ravelry is a social networking website, launched into beta in May 2007, that allows knitters and crocheters around the world to organize and share projects and ideas. By February 2008 over 80,000 members [cite news |first= Mike |last= Antonucci |title= Knitting fans take to the web |date= February 22, 2008 |publisher= San Jose Mercury News |url= http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_8332981 | accessdate= 2008-03-09 ] have signed up, and there remains an ongoing waiting list of over 5,000 members. [cite news |title= Beyond MySpace |date= February 23, 2008 |publisher= The State |url= http://www.thestate.com/news-extras/story/325106.html | accessdate= 2008-03-09 ] As the site is still under development (in the beta stage), users who sign up request an invitation and are admitted to the site at a rate of 800-1000 members per day. [ [http://www.ravelry.com Ravelry Homepage] ]

Foundation

Founded in May 2007, Ravelry is the brainchild of husband and wife team Casey and Jessica Forbes. Their idea was to create a web presence for all fiber artists. In Jessica's own words:

Features

As of June 1, 2008, over 135,000 members had registered, and there was about a 2 day wait list. As of June 5, 2008, the turnaround time for invitations has been crunched to about 1 day. There are just over 1000 people on the wait list. As of September 17, 2008, the community has grown to 182,586 registered users, with a 4 day wait time.

The format of Ravelry is user-friendly. Popular topics are arranged in a series of tabs, and subtopics can be accessed from there, either by drop-down menus or direct links.

"My Notebook"

My Notebook contains information about you, the Ravelry user. Primarily used for the cataloguing and organizing of the various implements used by each individual artist, from yarns, to tools, to instruction books, this tab provides a place for:

*"Projects" - a list of all items the member is either working on (WIP - work in progress), has finished, has stopped working on (hibernating), or has ripped out (frogged)

*"Stash" - a term used by knitters and crocheters to describe and catalogue their collections of yarn, and track quantities and dye lots. Stashed yarns can be added as the yarn used for a project; when a project is completed, the stash quantity will be reduced, and a note indicating the project and quantity used will be noted on the stashed item's page. A list of stash items can be exported in Excel format.

*"Queue" - a wish list of sorts, allowing users to file those projects they would like to make in the future. The queue is made up of patterns/projects/yarns that the end user wants to make next. Books, magazines, and websites needed for queued patterns will show up automatically in the Needed for Queue tab. Queued items can be re-sorted, and viewed as thumbnails, or in list form. As of August 2008, queued items now indicate the yarn the queued pattern calls for.

*"Favorites" - a list of projects/yarns/patterns/designers/yarn brands/advertisements/news articles the user likes considerably.

*"Friends" - staying true to its social networking facet, Ravelry allows users to identify who their friends are. Unlike other networking sites, friendship does not always have to be reciprocal. This is especially true in the case of notable figures in the knitting world, such as author and blogger "The Yarn Harlot", Stephanie Pearl-McPhee; designers; and even the Ravelry creators themselves.

Under the Friends Category, there are 2 additional tabs:
*"Friends activity" - a smorgasboard page of favorites (yarns, patterns, projects, designers), projects updated, stash updated, patterns queued, and comments made
*"Friends blogs" - recent blog posts are organized by date, depending on the Friends selected

*"Groups" - groups are user created entities, allowing for further subdivision of users. Groups cover a wide variety of topics, from specialized techniques, love for a certain yarn brand, tv shows and movies, to specific occupations. Unlike yahoo or google, membership among groups is seamless, so once logged-in and a group has been joined, the end user does not need to login to multiple groups on an individual basis. Topics can be watched, and joining groups allows members to easily access groups they are a member of from the main groups page.

*"Needles and Hooks" - used for cataloguing the various knitting needles and crochet hooks owned by each user. Notes can be recorded.

*"Books" - a personalized library of the current volumes owned by the user. Photos of the book sit on the shelf. Library tabs also include magazines and free pdf files which have been stored in the library from the pattern page.

*"Message Box" - similar to intra-office mail, this is used by users to PM, or private message, one another.

*"Blog Posts" - Ravelry offers the ability to directly link your blog to your profile. It checks for blog updates peridoically, and lists them on your Profile page.

*"Contributions" - currently only allows users to add a new yarn or pattern, but will eventually allow for the tracking of contributions to those categories.

*"Purchases" - users may keep track of monetary donations made to Ravelry or purchases made at the Ravelry mini-mart.

All of the above categories, with the exception of the Message Box and Purchases, are viewable by all Ravelry members.

Patterns

The Patterns tab contains all patterns currently available through Ravelry. As it is heavily user-edited, this page is constantly changing.

A list of the most recent contributions is contained on the main Patterns page. From this page, users may also search for specific patterns, by keyword or tag; review a list of random designers who are registered for Ravelry; select from popular categories; or use the pattern browser.

The pattern browser is an advanced search method. It allows users to search using a variety of filters, including craft type (knit or crochet); yarn weight (the thickness of the yarn called for in the project); pattern category; and rating, which is an average of what users rated that pattern (on a 1-5 scale, 5 being best).

Yarn

This tab, along with the Pattern tab, helps to make up the basis for all projects created at the hands of fiber artists. Similar to the Patterns tab, users figure strongly into the adding of new yarns, and it is a dynamic page as well.

Along with a recently added yarns box, users may view a list of popular yarns (those being used in the largest number of projects), and also see randomly selected "yarnies" (those who spin and/or dye their own yarn). Another useful feature is the Local Yarn Shop (LYS) Directory. This feature allows users to find shops who specialize in the sale of yarn, fiber, patterns, and tools needed for the working of fiber. Searches may be conducted by city, state, ZIP Code, or name.

The Yarn tab also contains a yarn browser, allowing users to narrow their search, based on yarn weight, rating, and fiber content.

People

The People tab is the central hub for finding any one of the over 135,000 users of Ravelry. It allows users to see a list of "featured Ravelers", which change at the whim of the code writer; to search for users on name, geographical location, etc; and provides a listing of "neighbors", a group of other users with similar pattern/project interests, specific to the logged in user.

Forums

Forums are public meeting places, for users to convene and discuss a wide variety of topics. The main forums page contains a summary of the most recent topics discussed from each of the groups you, the user, are a member of. Users may also search all forums threads, which number in the hundreds of thousands, for anything from favorite food recipes, to tips for child rearing, to current world politics.

Forums are lightly moderated by a wide variety of users. Each thread started within in a group is overseen by the administrators of that group, and each individual post may be edited by the individual poster at any time. Also, there are a number of moderators, assigned by the owners of Ravelry, who have the ability to edit any thread.

Groups

Groups are used by members to socialize in more specific areas within the knitting/crocheting community. Groups have been created on a wide variety of topics, and members of each group have their own specific bulletin board, for posting notices and topics for discussion within the realm of that group.

Help

The Help tab allows users a place to search for the answers to their questions related to Ravelry itself. It provides a short history of the site, guided tours of the site, and information on how to use the site to its fullest extent.

Technical Partners

Photos can be added to yarn, pattern, and stash pages by connecting to the user's own [http://www.flickr.com flickr] , or [http://www.photobucket.com photobucket] account, or by uploading a photo directly, on a limited basis.

A Unique Idea

While Ravelry is one of the largest undertakings of its kind, it is certainly not a new concept. Ravelry combines several different concepts which have been available for several years. Ravelry is not a pattern source, however it does provide areas for users to share photos of projects knit from patterns, share free patterns, and names/sources of commercial patterns. It does not sell yarn; it simply offers a catalogue of yarns available, links to retailers for them, and the ability to share with other users what yarns a user has owned and used.

This practice makes Ravelry unique in that no one website has ever attempted to combine, in one source, so much of the knowledge available to world-wide fiber artists.

See also

* Social network service
* List of social networking websites

References

Further reading

*

External links

* [http://www.ravelry.com/ Ravelry]