Unraveled

After 9 years of operation, Ravelry is filled with information including over 14 million projects and more than 12 million stash entries. How do you catalog, sort through, and narrow down that volume of data? One great tool for that is tags. Today I’m going to show you how to tag a project or stash entry in your notebook and talk about why you might do so.

How to Tag

You’ll find the box to add tags on the page where you edit a notebook item. On a project or stash page there are two ways to enter tags in the field.

1. You can simply start typing in the field. Tags are all one word long, we use a space key to tell tags apart. So “top down” would become two different tags – top and down. The most popular convention is to smush all the words together, like “topdown”
2. The other way is to use the tagging tool, which you bring up by clicking the pink tag icon

The tagging tool gives you a larger text field to type in, as well as offering suggestions and common tags. You can add any of the offered tags by clicking on them once (and clicking on them again to remove them).

Why to Tag

Now that you know how to tag your items, let’s talk about why you would. One reason is for your own organization. You can do an advanced search by tag, so you could enter tags and then find all the scarves you’ve made for your mom or all your stashed yarns that were gifts.

Another reason you might want to tag is to participate in an event on Ravelry. A big one coming up is the Ravellenic Games, where Ravtheletes knit, crochet, spin, etc along with the Olympic Games in Rio. Tagging is how you enter your work and if you join the group you get special tagging tools!

Check out the instructions in the group on how to tag your projects to officially enroll them if you want to join the fun! And if you have any questions about the event, the official Ravellenic Games group is the place to ask – it’s run by a great bunch of volunteers who are happy to help!

I hope you enjoyed this overview of tagging items in your notebook! Enjoy joining in some organized fun, or just having a more orderly notebook.