To the rescue

Here at This Is Knit, we're very big fans of Ravelry. It's useful in choosing patterns, it's useful for substituting yarn, it's useful for asking advice (after all, where else can you find thousands of crocheters and knitters eager to answer your every question?). But there's many other ways in which the combined wisdom of the Ravelry crowd can be helpful, so we thought we'd mention a few of them that you mightn't have thought of. The pretty little shawl above is an example of one. This is Stephen West's Lakedale, designed for Malabrigo Sock. In the original printed version, there was a problem: some of the pattern was missing. But the designer, via Ravelry, came to the rescue. If you look at the pattern page for Lakedale, you'll find the needed corrections. This sort of aftercare is simply invaluable and Ravelry provides a place where it can be provided free to us all. Indeed, before you start a pattern, it's always a good idea to check out its pattern page to look for errata and see what comments other Ravellers have left. A couple of years ago, a tragedy was averted. One of our customers embarked on the Print o' the Wave stole. It's a beautiful piece of lace, but it's not a very quick project. The central panel is knitted first, with the lovely waving border knitted on around the edge. In total, there's about five metres of border, made from easy repeats of a sixteen-row pattern. It takes a while, but it's great fun. Until the yarn ran out, ten centimetres short of the end. Ten centimetres out of five metres. You can see a picture of the gap by scrolling down right here, though it makes for heart-rending viewing. Since some months had passed since the yarn had been bought, the dye lot had changed, and the colour of the new one was strikingly different. (That advice to check your dye lots? That's in deadly earnest.) So the knitter posted a thread in the This Is Knit group, asking for scraps of the original dye lot. You can read what happened here, but suffice it to say that a fellow Raveller invetigated the posted stashes of others and found the single ball of yarn that completed the project. And so the Big Pink Pretty was saved, which would have been impossible otherwise. And lo! there was much rejoicing. But what if you run into an issue with a pattern or have some question you'd like to ask a designer? In pre-Rav days, it was hard to get in touch, but now many, many designers are members themselves. What's more, there are designer-specific groups, set up by fans or by the designer in question. For example, there's Kate Davies (Love), a group devoted entirely to Kate's delightful patterns. Or there's Aoibhe Ní's group, called simply Aoibhe Ní, where you'll find advice on her exciting new crochet lace techniques, news about her workshops and notifications of new patterns and crochet-alongs. Then there's special events like the knit-along for Carole Feller's 100th pattern, Ravi. (That's Jacqui's one above). You'll find the group here (though we're happy to see that it's turning into a group for other KALs of Carol's new releases too). So if you're not already using Ravelry, or if you've just dipped your toe in to look for a pattern, there's lots, lots more to the place, so come join the fun. You know, the best thing is this: it's the users that make it what it is. And that means you.