Not One Alike
One of my favorite sources of inspiration is surfing Ravelry. I am sure that many of you have spent many a happy hour (or two) clicking from link to link on this amazing site and finding new project ideas, new yarns that you’ve never tried, or colorways that you might not have imagined would turn out so beautifully. Sometimes, just checking out your friends’ activity can be enough to find new ideas.
I love the Ravelry pattern database. If you spend some time scrolling down the left hand column of the Advanced Search page, you will see that there is a multitude of ways to narrow down the staggering current total of 349,002 patterns available to a more manageable number. One of my favorite ways to find a new pattern for a particular yarn that I have a crush on, is to use the weight criteria to isolate patterns that were designed for the gauge of yarn I have in mind. This ensures that I won’t be distracted by patterns created for other gauges that would require time consuming math to ensure a proper fit.
I often then sort my results by “most projects” up at the top of the page. This guarantees that the search results are sorted with the most completed patterns at the top. I like to rely on the expertise of the other Ravelry members. By looking through other Raveler’s projects, their notes often indicate if they enjoyed the pattern, found it well constructed, or if they have suggestions that might make the going a bit easier for me.
Our recent snowfall has me thinking about snowflakes. So, I thought I would search for snowflakes in the pattern database and see if I could find some patterns worth sharing. Today, I searched for projects with a photo, which were knitted, which are available as a Ravelry download, and are either clothing or accessories. I also plugged the word snowflake into the search box at the top of the page. This brought back a result of just 267 matches. My top three favorites are below.
© Kate Davies
Snawheid by Kate Davies. A beautiful fingering weight Fair Isle hat that looks just as great with a big poofy pompom as it does without. Dawn has been thinking about knitting one of these before the snowy season ends this spring.
Norwegian Star Earflap Hat by Tiennie is a free Ravelry download pattern for a little hat made with Cascade 220. This great worsted weight superwash yarn will be available at 30% off as our Deal of the Day on Wednesday March 13th. (You may want to mark that on your calendars).
© Vogue Knitting
#01 Nordic Gloves by Norwegian designer Lone Smevik Soleng. These beauties were published in Vogue Knitting in the fall of 2011. Ravelers have successfully translated the pattern into mittens, so you have some options available to you with this pattern. Taking a peek at Lone's other original designs will provide you with a wealth of other snowflake pattern projects that are just as stunning.
I hope that you spend some time on Ravelry this week goofing around and following some intriguing links. If you run into snags, call us at the shop and we can try to provide some technical support. We hope that your time spent online is rewarding and that some of the new ideas you find there may eventually flourish into a project you find worth casting on for.