ravelry tips and tricks -...

Ravelry Tips & Tric ks

Most of us spend time on Ravelry every day – sometimes much more time than we planned on spending (oh come on, you know you’ve been down that rabbit hole). Here are some of our favorite tips and tricks to get the most out of Ravelry. Enjoy!

Search Search is one of the best ways to use Ravelry. Here are some of our favorite tips. Search for Patterns by Weight and Yardage Have a certain yarn you want to use? Search for it in the pattern browser to get ideas for your next project. Discover patterns you didn’t know existed, find a pattern you haven’t thought of recently or just get some new ideas.


Other Ways to Search

• Hot Right Now: See a list of what’s most popular on Ravelry. Click browse patterns in this order to see more.

• You’ve Looked At: Ever look at a pattern and then not remember its name? You’ve looked at is the answer. If it’s not in your top three patterns, click your history page to see more.

• Your Pattern Highlights: these are new patterns that Ravelry thinks are more relevant to you, based on your projects, favorite designers, friends (and maybe others too).


Search Operators Search is all over Ravelry – forums, patterns, projects to name a few. Want to be really specific with your search? Maybe you’re in the forums and want to find posts:

• Talk about increases • But not lifted increases • And mention tutorial

The full list of operators is here on Ravelry.

Forums Posts and Replies Did you know if you type [<start of the word that Ravelry will suggest what you’re trying to type? It will choose between usernames, patterns, and designers. You need to enable this (read below in Forum Settings).


Add a Pic or Video

When you’re creating a post, insert an image or video by clicking on the icon. For images, you can insert

• Any image you have in your project or stash (and it’ll link to the item) • Any image on the web (make sure you have the rights to do it!)

For videos, you can insert from YouTube, Vimeo or Vine.

Posts by a User Curious to see all posts in a thread by a certain user? Just click the number in the parentheses next to their total number of posts. Forum Editor Good info if you want more than just the basic type and post. I’ll bet a few of them show things you never knew how to do. I didn’t know how to do polls – until now.

• This post talks about polls, footnotes, formatting and more. • This post gives you more than you ever thought you needed to know about using the text editor.


Forum Settings Go to this page for some more advanced settings for your forums. One of my favorites is the Quick Magic Links in the other settings section.


Forum Tools – Mark all read/unread, watch thread or ignore Not interested in reading all umpteen unread pages? Mark it read by using the “Tools” button in the lower right corner. Same for Watch, Mark Unread and Ignore.


Managing Your Stuff Projects Create a project in Ravelry as soon as you CO – or even before to take notes on your plans. Include:

• Yarn used – including color name, color number and when done, yardage used. • Needles – and keep track of which brand you used in the notes • Share – By default, projects are only available to Ravelry members. If you want others to see it or if

you’re sharing it on social media, make sure it’s public.

• Blog posts – If you have a blog, make sure to choose which posts you’ve written about the projects. It helps other knitters and it gives you more readers.

Stash Inputting your stash can feel like a daunting task. A couple tips for taking the plunge:

• Do a little at a time o Enter all of one weight o Take pics all at once o Start with one type of yarn you have a lot of (brand, weight, color)

• Get in the habit of adding a new yarn as soon as you buy it – don’t let it amass • Don’t let the pics be a hindrance – add the yarn now and then do the pics later


• Try to put in as much detail as possible (name, color, dye lot). I’ve had people PM me asking if I’d part with a ball of a yarn because it was in the dye lot they needed (and often I’m happy to)

• If you choose the color when you add the yarn, you can sort by color when you view your stash. It gives you another way to look at your stash, and can let you know (if you’re me) that you have more than enough pink/purple/red.


Project Planning If you’re considering starting a new project, read about it on Ravelry to be in the know on tips, kudos and challenges with the pattern. This is great to read about a pattern you haven’t purchased yet (learn that the schematic is great, the instructions are detailed or the designer support isn’t all that).

On the pattern page, click:

• Projects – see what FOs and WIPs look like o When on the project page, click Advanced Search

! Sort by Most Helpful to read the notes that people think are useful. ! Search by yardage used if you’re trying to figure out if you can eek out the design

with certain yardage. • Blog Posts – to read more details from knitters • Comments – this will often have the typical “great design!” but you may also get a flavor for

something more – comments about a smart part of the design or feedback that the designer is not addressing

• Forum Posts – similar to comments, although these can also talk about plans, pros and cons, yarn ideas, etc.

Organizing Your Stuff Favorites versus the Queue People ask all the time – should I favorite or should I queue something? When I first started using Ravelry I queued everything I liked (I’m not even sure if favoriting was an option back then). But later on – with a queue as large as a SABLE stash – I admitted that “queuing” really didn’t make any sense. There was no way I was going to knit all these things. So then I switched to favorites and haven’t queued in quite a long time. This method works for me. But if you want to queue – go ahead an queue your heart out. Whichever works for you.


Tagging Whether you Fave or Queue (or both), you really need to tag. This is your way of saving things about the design. I’ll tag things as “shawl” or “fall15” or “camploopy”. When I’m on my favorites page I can view all the items by clicking the tag. This is also on the Advanced Search page.


Ravelry Guided Tips Ravelry has published a few tours that work as overlays on your screen. They have one for

• Library • Yarn database • Sifting through projects • Remember and Compare

They show you what to do right on the Ravelry screen. If you’re a visual learner this might be the thing for you.

Your Ravelry Number Have you seen people posting their Ravelry number and wondering how they got it? Go to your Profile page (click the about me link on your notebook) and type this:

""##$%$%ba Your number will show up right under the Raveler since heading.

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