Unraveled

As I type this post, we have 11,216,300 projects in our users’ notebooks. Last month, August 2014, 161,000 projects were added to Ravelry – an average of about 5,200 projects a day. This year, on January 1, was our busiest project-adding day, with 10,984 projects added to notebooks! (You all were busy during the holidays!) These numbers are pretty huge – but we also know that out of the users who were active in the past month, about 60% have no projects in their notebooks. It is perfectly fine to use Ravelry without ever adding a project to your notebook (there are no wrong ways to use Ravelry!), but we thought it would be handy to do a little Thursday Tips series on Ravelry projects, just in case some of you wanted to start adding projects but were intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea.

This post is an overview of Project Pages: what are they, where can you find them, and what information do they include? Let’s get started!

What is a project page?

A project page, like this one for oharethey Christina’s lovely Curtain Call Cowl, is like a scrapbook or record of a project you have made. Project pages are found in the projects section of your Ravelry notebook, and all projects on Ravelry are visible to any other Ravelry user. (You can also choose to make your projects public or share them with non-Ravelers – check out our previous Thursday Tips post about that feature!)

Project pages have different sections where you can record pattern and yarn information, rate patterns or yarns used, add photos, and keep notes. You certainly don’t have to fill in all the information for every project – only what you want to remember. I’ll be going over adding a project (and filling in all this information) in a future post, but for now, let’s take a look at this knitting project page and break it down!

Project info

The top section of your project page contains the basic info:

• Name: the name you give your project.
• Pattern: this is the pattern used for the project. Clicking on the pattern name here will lead you to that pattern’s Ravelry page. Linking your project to a pattern on your projects page (by typing in the pattern name when you enter your project) will also cause your project to appear on the projects tab for the pattern!
• Craft: on Ravelry, you can create project pages for any of your knitting, crocheting, loom knitting, machine knitting, weaving, or spinning projects. Each craft has fields that are specific to that crafts’ needs (for example, crochet projects will mention hooks instead of needles); you can check out project pages for loom knitting, machine knitting, weaving, and spinning projects, to see how their projects pages differ!
• Made for: you can write out who the project was made for – even if it was yourself! If the project was made for a Raveler you can link the project to them by entering their Ravelry username.
• Size: note the size you made here.
• Tags: here you can use tags to describe or organize your projects. Clicking on a tag will lead you to an advanced search of all of your other projects with the same tag. Clicking on the “cowl” tag for Christina’s project shows me that she likes to make pretty cowls!

Needle and yarn

• Needle (or hook, for crochet projects): this field is where you keep track of the needle and hook size you use. A personal note: every time I think I’m going to finish a project quickly and don’t fill this in, it ends up hibernating for months, I grab the needle or hook out of it thinking I’ll put it right back (but I don’t), and the next time I go to work on the project I have no idea what size I used so I go to check that info on Ravelry where I discover I didn’t fill it in… cue, sadness and woe. I love this field SO MUCH, when I use it.
• Yarn: Link to the yarn you used here. Just like when you link to patterns, clicking on the linked yarn’s name will lead you to that yarn’s Ravelry page, and your project will be included on the projects tab with other projects that have used that yarn.
• Stash: if you used a yarn that was in your stash, your stash entry will be linked here.
• How much? keep track of the yards/meters you used in this field.
• Colorway: enter the colorway of the yarn here. Clicking on that colorway name will lead you to a search for other skeins in that colorway that have been stashed on Ravelry.
• Color family: This is a more general field for the color family of your yarn.
• Purchased at: Here, you can record where you bought the yarn…
• Purchase date: …and when you bought it!

Notes

In the project notes field, you can add as much or little information as you want. This is a great place to share general impressions or super-detailed information. I’ll have a lot to share about the Notes field in another post in this introduction to projects series!

Photos

On the left of the page you can see any photos you’ve added to this project! I’ll do a detailed post about adding project photos as part of this intro to projects series. Photos can be so helpful to other Ravelers looking for information about projects. Even if you don’t think your photos are professional-quality, you just might have captured a detail or angle that really helps someone else!

Tabs, Status Box, and More Projects

At the top of the right side of the project page you’ll see tabs for photos (on your own project pages only), blog posts (here, you can link blog posts on your blog – if you have one – to this project), and the comments tab, where you can see comments and the “fan club” (people who have added this project to their favorites).

Below the tabs we have the “add to favorites” button, and underneath that is the status section. Here you can mark your project as a Work In Progress (WIP), hibernating, finished, or frogged. You can rate your happiness with the project – the big smile here means Christina was really happy! (The unhappiest rating you can choose will mark your project with an “ugh” status… don’t feel bad, we’ve all been there. And we think you did a great job.) You can also record the start and end dates. While a project is in progress you can track how far along you are with a progress bar here:

About this Pattern and Yarn

Below the status section on the right are the about this pattern and about this yarn sections. These appear if you’ve linked your project to patterns or yarns on Ravelry, and give you some basic information about the pattern in yarn. In these boxes, you can also rate the pattern and yarn! There are two ratings for patterns: the stars which are for pattern quality, and the difficulty rating which is where you can rate the ease of the pattern. Yarns have a star rating only, for you to share your thoughts about the yarn quality.

If a yarn has a Ravelry advertiser, you’ll see them appear as a buying option for the yarn underneath the about this yarn box. We have separate ad spots for online and LYS advertisers, so sometimes you might also see that a yarn is available locally in this section, too!

The final details at the bottom are some fun facts – when the pattern was originally queued, when the project was created, and the last time it was updated.

Yay Project Pages!

As you can see, project pages can contain a lot of great information about your wonderful crafty endeavors. You will never be required to add projects to Ravelry – but it sure can be fun to record and show off your hard work by doing so!

I’ll be doing more introductory project page posts for my next three Thursday Tips, so if you’ve ever wondered how to add a project to your notebook, add photos to your project pages, or what kind of notes to enter in your project notes field, stay tuned!