Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Need Alternatives to Ravelry for Buying Patterns?

by

Since Ravelry changed its site design last month, making it unusable for some people (and it’s unknown when or if those issues will be fixed) many people are looking for alternatives to Ravelry for buying and selling patterns.

Promised Fibers has put together a list of some options, including knitwear designers who are selling direct on their own websites, as well as other places to buy patterns like Etsy and PayHip.

You’ll also find apps that help you use your Ravelry information without being on the site itself, and even a browser extension that changes the look of Ravelry to something that might be more usable for some viewers. (Note that more information about the extension is available on Ravelry, but you can also directly download it.)

Have you been using other sources since Ravelry changed its look? I’d love to hear about it.

Next Pattern:

Comments

  1. I have. I’m using “Yarnbook” presentet on Facebook. A danish site where a lot of nordic knitters sell there patterns. It’s a lot easier, and you can save all your patterns online that you bought from the designers. Also share informations and details on there facebook-site, A great site 🙂

  2. I transferred my patterns to lovecrafts, though that site needs some work as it’s harder to organise ones library, or tell what’s in a collection and what’s not !
    I still keep rav, I think you need to, keepIng a rav account to access patterns on lovecrafts , though that could be wrong, plus it’s the easiest way to print off or download a pattern. Looking on rav even for a very short time gives me the most awful headache, and what’s more rav don’t give a darn

Have you read?

Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths