Is Ravelry overwhelming to you? Is there so much information in this amazing database that your brain cringes at the thought of delving into it? Today we hope to make it easier to navigate. Please be sure to let My Sister Knits know what else you have questions about! We want everyone to be able to use Ravelry successfully as it’s such a useful tool.

Ravelry can be daunting as it is meant to be used in so many ways; let’s break it down a bit.

Say you saw this darling baby sweater on display at the shop. You wrote down the name of the pattern and now you’re at home. Out of curiosity, you want to see what other yarns were used for it. Open Ravelry and enter the name, Seaside Set, into the patterns category of the Quick Search tab on the home page. Be sure you spell it correctly as that is vital. Click on the pattern photo from the page that pops up; this will take you to the pattern page.

At the top of the page, you’ll see a Yarn Ideas tab. Click on it and you’ll find the yarns used listed in order from most projects to least. On this page, you’ll notice that Knitting for Olive Merino was used 25 times. We carry that yarn and now you know that it’s another option! You can come into the shop and compare it with the Pascuali Balayage that our sample is made with.

Pascuali Balayage, 80% baby alpaca, 20% merino

Now we’re going to look at Ravelry from a different perspective. There’s some yarn in the shop that you’ve been eyeing; you’d like to find out what people have made out of it. Go back to the Quick Search box on the home page. Choose yarns from the drop-down menu and type in Pascuali Balayage. You’ll see that two choices pop up. The top choice has 141 projects while the bottom choice has 702 projects; click on the bottom one. Notice all of the category tabs across the top of the page! You can explore them at your leisure another day.

Choose the Pattern Ideas tab and you will find a treasure trove of information! Here you’ll see a photo of the pattern that links to the pattern page. You’ll also see links to individual projects and the number of projects made. For instance, you’ll find 59 projects of Melanie Berg’s shawl Nixe. In all, there are four pages of pattern ideas to look at!

Here’s yet a third approach to finding patterns! You want to make a colorwork hat but you only want to use two colors. You haven’t decided which yarn weight to use so you’re open to ideas. Go to Ravelry’s home page. Up at the top left-hand corner you’ll see ravelry written out in red. Next to it you’ll see the patterns tab; click on it. Under the Search Patterns box, you’ll see Advanced Search. Click on that. On the left side of this page you will find many options to filter your search which you can explore later!

From Category, choose Accessories, then choose Hat and Beanie

From Availability, choose Ravelry Download

From Attributes, choose Colorwork and whatever technique you want to use, let’s choose stranded for today

From Colors Used (typical), choose 2

From Craft, choose knitting

That’s enough filters for now. You can play with the others another time!

By now you’ve decided that DK might be a good weight for a hat, so you go back up to the Weight filter and choose DK. Now you have 12 pages of hats to choose from! If you want to see the worsted weight hats, go back to the Weight box to uncheck DK and check Worsted instead. Now you have 15 pages of patterns!

Explore Ravelry a little at a time and ask us for help, you’ll be glad you did!

Happy knitting,

Overwhelmed By Ravelry?

Teeny Weeny Beanie

Captivating Coast to Coast Restocked!