Ravelry

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Ravelry
URL	http://www.ravelry.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Social Network
Registration	Free (invitation required)
Owner	Ravelry, LLC
Created by	Casey and Jessica Forbes

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^[1] have signed up, and there remains an ongoing waiting list of over 5,000 members^[2]. 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^[3].

Contents 1 Foundation 2 Features 3 A Unique Idea 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit] Foundation

Ravelry, founded in May 2007, 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,

Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration.^[4]

[edit] 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.

The format of Ravelry is laid out in a user-friendly format. 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;
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 queue up to use.
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.
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, and specific occupations.
Needles and Hooks - used for cataloguing the various knitting needles and crochet hooks owned by each user.
Books - a personalized library of the current volumes owned by the user.
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 catagories.
Purchases - users may keep track of monetary donations made to Ravelry or purchases made at the Ravelry mini-mart.

All of the above catagories, 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 catagories; 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. Seaches 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.

[edit] 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 combined, in one easy to use source, all of the knowledge available to fiber artists around the world.

[edit] See also

• Social network service
• List of social networking websites

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Lowensohn, Josh. "Social network Ravelry solves a tangled problem", CNET Webware, October 2, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-09. 

[edit] External links

• Ravelry