Unraveled

From the understated to the blingy, today’s post is about recently completed jewelry.

First up, the sparkly. lesleybridgewater’s crochet chain link necklace, Ingazzz’s Häkelkette, and meliciap’s Silver Viking Knit Bracelet.

Next, the beaded! Ourlolie’s Knitted Braids Necklace, krystalline’s Ribband the Third, and xwordphile’s Bunch Bands.

Finally, the understated (clockwise from left). colette-gabriela’s springtime necklace, Zonneke’s Cousines, MiscNich’s Cable Braided Necklace, and Kattarina’s BabyFun necklace “Amélia”.

PS I know that technically there are no rings in this post, but Beyonce doesn’t have a catchy chorus about necklaces and bracelets.

Welcome to the Ravelry patterns tab! This post will be the first in a tour of the Ravelry navigation tabs. We’re going to break them all down for you so you can feel more comfortable using the site. There are a lot of great features hidden away so I think novices and advanced users could all learn something new!

You can get to the patterns tab by visiting www.ravelry.com/patterns or clicking the patterns tab at the top of your screen, next to your notebook tab. Let’s get started on our tour with the top left side of the screen.

Search Patterns

The first thing you’ll see is a search box. If you know what you want to search for, you can enter your term and hit search to be taken to the advanced search. If you’re not so sure, right underneath that is a link to the advanced search where you can take a browse.

Personalize

If you’d prefer your default advanced search results to include just one craft you can choose it here!

Hot Right Now

This is a list of the patterns that have gotten the most views in the past 24 hours. You can jump right to one of those patterns or visit the advanced search sorted by recent views.

Next up, let’s check out the bottom left.

You’ve Looked At

This is your pattern browsing history. I love this when I know I saw something a friend would love a few days ago but can’t remember what it was – I can click the link to my history page and find it easily.

Recently Added Patterns

The most recently added patterns with photos show up here. The link at the top of the section takes you to a special page just for browsing recently published patterns, which you can filter by category.

That’s the left side of the screen. Now let’s check out the right column.

Browse Categories

Did we know we have 200 pattern categories in our database? These are quick links to see popular patterns in each of those categories.

Designers on Ravelry

Here you can find patterns available as PDF downloads from Ravelry. You can see all of them, or we’ve split them out into free or for sale patterns if you prefer to browse that way.

Your Pattern Highlights

These are newly released patterns that we think you might like. You can go directly to one of these new beauties by clicking on a picture or view all your highlights by choosing the link. (And if you don’t like them and you want to customize them, check out this post from Mary-Heather.)

Finally, let’s round this out with the bottom right part of the page.

Something Random

We grab a random pattern attribute and show you some patterns with it :) It’s a great way to learn about some of the attributes we use to categorize patterns, and see some random eye candy.

Popular Attributes

Just like the random attribute above, this is a sampling of the attributes we use to sort patterns. These are the most popular attributes, so these will change over time. Clicking on one takes you to a list of patterns tagged with that attribute.

Search Projects by Tag

We close out the page with another search field – this one for lets you enter a tag and find projects tagged with it.

So, here ends our tour of the patterns tab. I hope you learned something new and look forward to walking through the rest of the site over the coming weeks!

Everywhere I look lately I see green. Trees are budding and grass is growing and flowers are blooming. Inspired by that, today’s eye candy is green projects finished in March.

First, some light green lovelies: Heikku’s Marina, MNakata54’s Girasole, and beforesunrise’s someday in the sky we’ll see the same sun on the rise.

How about some bright green beauties? ErinB’s Welcome to the Flock, Svipser’s In Transit (5), and KotCheshirskiy’s “Family Look” part II.

Last, let’s round it out with some dark green delights: HoleyFiber’s Green Moss Cowl Sweater, estregger’s stregg nog, Amigo74’s Spring Hazel, and Mary-Pet’s Green dress.

I think you’re all feeling the green love lately too, since 10% of the projects from this month were green. You can check them all out using this link!

I know that a lot of you are like me – even when you’re away from the big screen of a computer, you can’t stay away from the lure of the Ravelry forums. We’ve recently launched a revamp of the forums for mobile devices to make them easier to use on smaller screens.

Here are some highlights of the new features you’ll find in this view:

• all your forums are in a single column which means they can be bigger and more legible
• the buttons are increased in size and much easier to click
• the reply box where you type your text is larger

You don’t have to do anything to get this view – just navigate to your forums  with a mobile device and it will come on automatically.

What if you don’t like it? Well, it’s easy to opt out of.

At the bottom of every forums page there’s a big button you can click to return to the old view. (And if you change your mind, you can turn it back on in the same place!) There are some other great buttons at the bottom of every mobile forums page, which I annotated above – you can return to your forums, to the index for that specific group, to the top of the page, and to the next thread with unread posts.

We hope you’ll give this new view a shot! If you have any questions or comments, we’ve got a big thread going here in For the Love of Ravelry.

While playing around in the advanced project search a few weeks ago, I realized that it’s possible to find projects done with more than 1 yarn weight. It was tough to tear myself away from the amazing projects I found in the results, and I immediately penciled this in for my next Eye Candy post. I’m really excited to share some of these beauties with you today.

I really love the effect of different colors plus different yarn weights in al these projects! Clockwise from top left: KimDenise’s Fifty Grifty, SpringerB6’s Restekiste – two teddy bears, and apedawn’s Frostline.

These sweaters are all gorgeous pairings of different yarn weights. procleusmatic’s northern beauty (why yes, I would like to start adding a luscious cuff edging to all my sweaters!), iikku’s True friend, and hydrangealover’s Thandie Funnel Neck.

All these projects are the result of two different weights knit together. What amazing results! Clockwise from left: eritml’s Polaris, EspaceTricot’s Mira’s Cowl, VincentandFriends’ Josie, and himawari’s Aurelia Cowl.

PS Here’s an example of the search I used to find projects for this post – select 2 yarn weights and make sure the filter says AND between them. You might notice in your searches that you turn up diversely international results, a great glimpse into popular techniques in different places.

If you’re a moderator of any groups on Ravelry, then today’s tip is for you – we’re going to talk about some recent improvements to the reports section.

Reports are the way that Ravelry moderators can speak privately about flagged posts in their groups. When someone flags a post, a new report is created and there the moderators can view the post and add comments that only they can see. They’re helpful for handling inappropriate postings, and for planning fun surprises for group members! Now that you know a little about them, let’s talk about what’s new!

When you’re adding a comment, below it you’ll see a new checkbox to mark a comment as urgent. Reports can be chatty, so this is a great way to mark those posts that are really important to notify your fellow moderators about.

Visit your forums settings page, and if you’re a moderator you’ll see a new section called moderator settings. These settings add a new level of control to the messages you receive about reports in your group.  For each group you moderate, you can turn on or off private messages for:

1. Each newly flagged post in your group.
2. Each comment on a report by a fellow moderator.
3. Each urgent comment on a report by a fellow moderator.

What make a comment urgent? That’s up to your and your fellow mods! Our big 6 moderators use “Notify me of urgent comments” as a sort of vacation mode – they can step away for a few days and come back to a PM box that’s just the important stuff to catch up on.

The last improvement to the reports section is that just like in the forums we keep track of unread comments. Now it’s easy to see at a glance on the reports index which ones have new comments and which you’re all caught up on. And, just like the forums, we’ll bring you straight to the newest comment, which is handy in long discussions!

Thank you to all our moderators for volunteering to help out a Ravelry group; we hope these improvements make your job easier!

Hello and happy Mardi Gras, Ravelers!  In the US, the home of our biggest Fat Tuesday celebration is New Orleans, Louisiana.  So, today we’re going to celebrate some of the amazing projects made recently by Louisiana Ravelers.

First up I highlight some hats! Lollyloop’s Red Dragon is so detailed, ShaunaMHamilton’s Fixation Hat has an awesome color combo and aehull’s ear flaps in handspun looks like a squishy marvel.

Next are some shawls and a backpack. I love how much shine there is to RitaMiller’s Amethyst, YarnGardenStore’s Leslie’s Shadow & Glow has the most handsome model, Dawnetello’s Feather intarsia knapsack is gorgeous colorwork.

Finally, some sweaters. I loved all of these because the models look so happy and proud! From left to right: yvonnegut’s Overcast, dyb317’s Garter Stitch Sweater, and ashleybah’s Mudblood.

We are so excited that on Sunday, February 1, we hit the amazing milestone of 5 million Ravelers!  It is wonderful to have such a huge, warm community of people who love fiber arts just like us.  To celebrate, today’s Community Eye Candy focuses on some 5 millionths, and the number 5.

First up, let’s look at some 5 millionths from around the site.  Clockwise from top right: the 5 millionth finished project, 1i1monkee’s Aran cardigan, the 5 millionth project, theyarnprincess’ French Toast (her 3rd time out of 7 doing that pattern!), and the subject of the 5 millionth favorite, wakenda’s Mrs. Darcy.

And how about some neat project with the number 5?  Clockwise from top right: kateyj’s Snarky Design Handspun which is exactly 500 yards of handspun, Jellythecat’s Age UK Warm Home, which she made in 5 days, and amclothier’s Happy Throw for Brynlee, made with 5 colors of the same yarn.

Thank you so much for being a Ravelry member.  We are so grateful to have you be a part of our community.

I’m one of the programmers at Ravelry, so I think one of the coolest things about our site is the data it provides.  Today’s tip is about a fun little tool on your project page that totals the length of yarn used in all your completed projects.

Scroll to the bottom of your project page in your notebook, and you’ll see this little summary of the yardage (or metreage if that’s the appropriate unit for you!) in your projects.  Clicking on the link takes you to a table with your projects and the yardage used in each one.  Here I see that 2 out of 3 of my most yardage-intensive projects were for my husband – lucky guy!

See a project with no yardage listed even though you know it used up yarn?  Click the edit link on that project page to make sure you have a yardage listed for each yarn – if you skip one we won’t be able to calculate your total yardage.

To take this to the next level, you’ll notice that this calculation shows separately on each of your project tabs if you’ve organized your projects into sets (check out this post from last year to learn how).  Raveler mulberryfibers shared the awesome idea to create a set for the projects you create each year and then you can see how much yarn you use each year!

My daughter’s school is studying continents, so life in different parts of the world has been a hot topic of conversation in my household lately. Inspired by that, today’s Community Eye Candy showcases what our Brasilian Ravelers are creating during their summer.

First up, some lovely shawls. colorlessblue’s NotMine Wedding Veil (what a shawl to knit as a gift!), danimyls’ Pink Lemon (Citron), and Bertilia’s Freya Shawl – Noemi.

Next, some colorful treats! Solange’s mini squares, vlmteixeira’s Circles of love, and laisscortegagna’s Fair isle Tam in a Loom.

And finally, some warm weather garments in these lovely tanks! lele’s Blusa Mandala and danielepolotow’s Saturn Rings.

As our Brasilian community members would say, feliz artesanato (happy crafting) to you all in this New Year!