Ravelry

I can not in all good conscience be a member of a community that will exclude so many while calling themselves "Inclusive" and state they are making it a "safe space". They exclude and hate anybody who does not agree with them. They do the same if you do not jump on the bandwagon with them right away. You have to walk in lockstep or be labeled a racist. I can not support the intolerance they are spouting.

Thus is THE place to find patterns, both free and otherwise, to get ideas and help with all your fiber arts questions, to keep track of your own work, etc. In addition, it's a vibrant community of knitters, crocheters, spinners and weavers from all around the world. The diversity is wonderful. Recently, there's been an exodus of some ugly minded people who can't stand the fact that they are not allowed to bully people of color, LGBT+ individuals, etc. on the site.

Ravelry has been a place for me since 2007 where I can learn anything to do with fibercrafts with the added benefit of lifelong friendships. I have friends from Rav where we've seen each other through hardships and milestones in life. Any patterns/yarn/fiber I can think of I can find or brainstorm with other designers to create. I tell every fiber enthusiast I meet" If you're not on rav, get on there! It will change your world"

While I didn't particularly care for their blanket labeling of certain people or their choice of political discrimination, my biggest ongoing concern with Ravelry has been the rampant pattern theft and distribution. This repeatedly harms designers like myself who create and sell unique knitting patterns. It has been an ongoing struggle for years of our designs being copied and shared as free patterns and the admins do nothing to properly penalize the repeat offenders. And the process to get our stolen patterns removed is very difficult and a slow process, sometimes impossible. This is completely unacceptable from a site who claims to support makers and designers, especially since they have no problem accepting the revenue from from site traffic, advertising, and our sales.

Ravelry has been the best thing to happen to fibre crafters since patterns were made available on the Internet. It is the largest database for knitting and crochet patterns, for yarns, and the search functions are extensive. Search by type of craft, free or paid patterns, type of project, yarn & needle/hook size, age/size, and more. As specific or generic as you want, covering online patterns, downloads, books, magazines, and more. Now multiply that by countries in the world and you've got the idea. I've been a member for over 12 years and it's my starting point for every yarn-based project I've ever made since then.

And if you're concerned about the politics and the stupid Trump supporters/Nazis/white supremacists, just remember that this is NOT strictly an American site; it is run by Americans but it was made for the international fibre arts community, and everyone is welcome to participate, but leave your discrimination at the door.

I loved the communities I was a part of and was happy to keep politics out of it, even when I cringed at their open push for things I disagreed with. But when they automatically excluded everyone who voted for Trump and called them white supremacists, it was like stepping over a line that was terribly unprofessional to cross. And what no one is mentioning is that even though the very week they closed their registration, they added 1500 PAGES of new members with empty profiles (no pics, no patterns, no projects). Also, out of the 8 million plus supposed members, less then 1 million of them have any sort of profile picture or avatar. Sounds rather bot-like and extremely suspicious. If you look further into their member lists, back in May, apparently another giant batch of "members" were added the same way. Rather odd! Why would you do that? Except maybe to monetize and profit from this somehow? It was time to say goodbye to a corrupt and unwelcome place.

The site has morphed from a crafts related to an anti Trump propaganda outlet. If you happen to believe in free speech or real diversity- you are in the wrong place. The site would ban anyone who happen to support Trump, no matter how gently because according to the site's guidelines every single one of 46 millions of people who voted for Trump are white supremacists. It also encourages its users to "report any pro Trump comments or projects". Joseph Stalin would be so proud of the owners. Shameful!

Ravelry is a fantastic site for knitters and crocheters! They have the widest variety of available patterns and I love that you can see so many projects for each pattern, which means you can see what the pattern looks like in a wide variety of colors on a lot of different body types.

The site has long had a policy against hate speech and has, as a result, banned support, via patterns, ravatars (the picture you choose to represent you), and posts, of a presidential candidate who regularly engages in such speech. For pretty well any other knitting content, this is the place to go.

I have been on Rav since 2008, I think. It was my first contact with a knitting community. Not many people in my small town knitted. Through Ravelry I met others that were somewhat local to me and had an incredible, to me, source for yarn and patterns.

I didn't hear about the discussions that started in January, about inclusiveness, until it had died down. Tried but could not really find out a lot about it. Then, June 23rd happened. On one hand, I was thrilled that they were taking a stand about hate speech. On the other, they might have taken it a bit far but I do not spend any time on the political threads so it really does not affect my use of Ravelry at all.

I am still there and plan on staying for the foreseeable future.