And the winner is…
May 22nd, 2012
After two rounds and 117,056 votes cast on more than 200 entries, we have a winner for the project bag design contest! A big thank you again to all who participated, either through submitting a design or taking the time to vote! I know that the voters had a really hard time deciding between the excellent designs.
And the winner is….
Elloknits!
As a reminder, the first place winner will receive $500 and an additional $500 if more than 500 bags are sold. We hope to have the project bag in the mini-mart in about two weeks so you can have one of your own! Make sure you go to the voting page to choose to be notified when the bag is in stock and we’ll send you a message to let you know.
We also wanted to acknowledge the designs that came in second and third. These winners will receive a $100 gift certificate to the yarn shop of their choice.
Second place was designed by manfredovna.
Third place was designed by worksweet.
We have been impressed by the immense talent of the people who submitted designs to the contest. Elloknits did a great job using the theme and incorporating many elements of Ravelry in her design. We’re glad it was up to a vote, though, as if it had been up to us, it would have been really hard to pick just one! We can’t wait to see the finished project bag!
PS – are you wondering which Raveler created your favorite design? We’ve updated the contest page and added usernames/avatars next to each of the entries: http://www.ravelry.com/contests/bag.
Ravelry Design Contest – Final Round of Voting
May 16th, 2012
A big thanks to the nearly 73,000 people who voted in the first round of our project bag design contest. The finalists have been determined, based entirely on your selections, and you can now vote in the final round of the contest. Voting will be open until Monday, May 21st at Midnight EST. You can only vote for one design. Vote now at http://www.ravelry.com/contests/bag
Congratulations to all of the finalists and thanks to each person who took the time to submit a design! This contest would not have been nearly as much fun without each of your submissions.
This is the final round in the contest, and the winner will have their design printed on a project bag that will be made available through the Ravelry Mini-Mart! If you didn’t vote in the first round, this one only has one page of images to choose from, so please take the time to vote. Ten voters will be randomly selected from this round of voting to receive a free project bag made from the winning design. We can’t wait to see which one you choose!
Ravelry Design Contest – Voting is Open!
May 10th, 2012
We are excited to announce that the voting is now open for the Ravelry design contest! You can review all of the submitted designs that fit the guidelines and vote between now and Tuesday, May 15th at midnight EST at http://www.ravelry.com/contests/bag
Each Raveler will get one vote. Since there are so many submissions, there will be another round of voting to select the final project bag design. We will announce the next round after we process the results from this one.
Thank you so much to everyone who submitted a design! We had a great response from Ravelers of all ages and are looking forward to seeing which ones are your favorites! If you have questions or comments about the contest, you can talk about it in For The Love of Ravelry.
Design Contest Update
May 7th, 2012
A big thank you to everyone who submitted designs to our contest! We had such a large response to our design contest that we won’t be able to open voting on May 7th as we had originally planned. We’re working as fast as we can to go through all of the submissions and make sure they meet the guidelines. Then, we’ll be setting up a voting system to make it easier for everyone to vote on the design they like the best! We’ll update you when voting becomes available. Thanks again to all who submitted! We can’t wait for you all to see them!
Thank you, Welcome Wagon!
May 2nd, 2012
The Ravelry Welcome Wagon group was founded in November 2007. Over the past few years they have sent well over 1 million messages (!!) to new users shortly after they joined, welcoming each new Ravelry member with a friendly letter introducing them to some basic Ravelry information and reaching out to them as a fellow Raveler. When the Welcome Wagon was first founded, Ravelry had about 500 new members each day. These days, there are about 1,800 new members every day!
Some time ago, the Welcome Wagon moderators decided that it was time to close down the group, as the time commitment was substantial and we here on the Ravelry staff have been working to increase the help information and tutorials available on the site. April 30 was the last day that letters were sent, and today, we want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has volunteered with the Welcome Wagon over the years! You all are a big part of what makes Ravelry so wonderful.
Thank you so much, Welcome Wagoneers! You have helped make Ravelry a happier place, and we are so proud to have you in our community. We are so thankful for everything you have done – and we hope that you have even more time to knit and crochet now!
Happy Bobmas (and a little contest)!
April 12th, 2012
Today marks 7 years since the idea of Ravelry was shared with the world (or at least the readers of Jess’ blog), a day we refer to as Bobmas!
Casey & Jess started work on Ravelry in January of 2007, so this year is Ravelry’s 5 year anniversary. To celebrate, we’re holding a contest! We know there are ton of talented ravelers out there with talents not only for knitting and crochet, but also graphic design. We are calling on you to create a design for our newest project bag.
Here are the contest details!
Ravelry has really been built by the contributions of our members. Through volunteer editing, making suggestions, participating in groups and forums, adding your projects to the database, and a ton of other ways, you add to Ravelry each day. We really appreciate the time that you take to add to this community and look forward to seeing the designs that you create to celebrate with us. If you aren’t a designer, you can still participate! Keep an eye on the For the Love of Ravelry forum so you can vote when the designs are posted.
*We’ve had a lot of requests for new things to buy in the mini mart! We have several new items in progress and hope to have them available very soon.
DFW Fiber Fest Fun!
April 3rd, 2012
Sarah and I had such a great time at the DFW Fiber Fest in Grapevine, Texas this past weekend! It was a quick trip and packed full of fun. Our first festival event (after checking out the marketplace) was our “Unraveling Ravelry” presentation on Friday night. We shared details about the history of Ravelry and how it grew into a business with a staff of four (plus Bob) and over 2 million members, and then gave some tips and tricks on how to use the site. It’s always our goal with these talks to share details that won’t overwhelm newer Ravelers, while also showing longtime regular users some features they may not have seen or tried yet. We also talked a bit about some upcoming Ravelry features (yes, the mobile site!) and answered some questions from the audience.
After the presentation was done, we had cake! HUGE thanks to everyone who came to our talk – your friendly faces were so encouraging! Special thanks also to the evening’s sponsors, who helped the DFW Fiber Fest bring us out to Texas: Brooks Farm Yarn, The Buffalo Wool Co., Butterfly Girl Designs, Jacob’s Reward Farm, and MadTosh!
On Saturday, we had more time to check out the vendors in the marketplace, and what a great show floor it was! You can guess from the list of vendors that there were lots of beautiful yarns, fibers, tools, bags, etc., and we couldn’t resist bringing home a few goodies. ;) At noon, we hosted a meetup in the Stitching Lounge (which could have easily been named the Spinning Lounge – there were so many spinners hanging out!). It’s always a joy to meet Ravelers in real life, and see folks who have been Ravelry friends for a long time (sometimes years) meet each other in person for the first time, and this event was no exception.
This is a local/regional event for both of us (since Sarah lives in Texas, and I live in New Mexico) and we’ve wanted to attend since we first heard of the festival a few years ago. We’re so happy to have had the chance to go – it’s a fun, well-organized event with great vendors and teachers and loads of friendly attendees!
Thanks so much for hosting us, DFW Fiber Fest! If you’d like to stay posted on next year’s event, check out the DFW Fiber Fest Ravelry group.
Ravelry at the DFW Fiber Fest!
March 27th, 2012
This weekend, Sarah and I are headed to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the DFW Fiber Fest! This is a new festival for both of us, and we can’t wait to attend. If you are in the area, we’d love to see you at our Ravelry meetup this Saturday, March 31, from 12 – 2 in the Stitching Lounge (more details and discussion about the meetup can be found in the DFW Fiber Fest group). We’ll have Hello! buttons to hand out, and as always, the meetup will be a great place to get to meet and chat with your Ravelry friends.
We are also giving a (sold out – eeps! Exciting!) talk, Unraveling Ravelry, on Friday night. If you’ve already reserved your place, we can’t wait to see you there – thanks so much for coming to see us!
The DFW Fiber Fest has a marketplace with great vendors, as well as some terrific classes. Sarah and I will definitely be checking out the marketplace on Friday and Saturday, so if you see us there, please do say hello!
congratulations to the book prize pack winners!
March 23rd, 2012
We had over 94,000 entries in our Ravelry Library Book Bundle Giveaway, and this morning Casey picked the 25 random winners! They are:
Legato, heyjulie, dragonflydreams, theyarnwhisperer, Bunks, firemanshunny, Lolotte1409, indybrown, Croative, polkaberry, LauraJJ, leah5150, 2aT, micicuta, PatchworkMoose, leahmarie, katkra56, SisuSiren, angelamo63, Ebeth, superjuana, Jay, Allalyt, Klwilson, and drgille!
Congratulations, lucky winners! I emailed you all this morning (to the email address connected with your Ravelry profile) so if you haven’t replied to that email with your mailing address yet, please do so!
Once again, we want to give a huge “thank you!” to all the publishers and designers who contributed to this wonderful prize pack. We are so grateful that you are a part of the Ravelry community!
If you’d like to congratulate the winners or chat about the prizes, we have a thread in the For the Love of Ravelry forum!
Learn about the new Ravelry Library and enter to win 26 books!
March 13th, 2012
We recently improved the Library section of your notebooks and made it an even better way for you to track of your craft library and browse and search all the patterns that you own.
Today we have a little tour and a big giveaway for you. Thanks to contributions from publishers and designers, we’re able to give away a big book prize package: 25 lucky winners will get 26 books each!
Keep reading to find out how to enter :)
Do you want to make sure that we got your entry? Check the top of the front page after signing in to ravelry.com
The Books
Each of the 25 winners will receive these 26 books:
10 patterns on Ravelry 
19 patterns on Ravelry 
24 patterns on Ravelry 
17 patterns on Ravelry 
10 patterns on Ravelry 
25 patterns on Ravelry 
22 patterns on Ravelry 
17 patterns on Ravelry 
24 patterns on Ravelry 
20 patterns on Ravelry 
23 patterns on Ravelry 
12 patterns on Ravelry 
17 patterns on Ravelry 
29 patterns on Ravelry 
15 patterns on Ravelry
Phew! Huge thanks to the publishers and designers who liked this idea and contributed their books.
Enter to win by taking the tour
We’ve made a short guided tour that shows you some of the new library features. It takes about 5 minutes to step through the tour. You don’t have to watch the whole thing to be eligible to win, but please do :)
To enter to win, either take the tour OR add something to your library before the deadline of 11:59 PM Eastern time on March 22nd 2012. When your entry has been recorded you’ll see a “You’ve entered!” notice at the top of Ravelry’s home page. This giveaway is open to Ravelers worldwide.
The fine print:
To enter, follow the library guided tour OR add a book or other item (pattern, magazine) to your Ravelry library before the giveaway ends at 11:59 PM Eastern time on March 22nd 2012. You can verify that entry was received by looking for a notice at the top the front page of Ravelry.com (after signing in). Only one entry per person will be counted.
The 25 winners will be chosen in a random drawing on Friday, March 23rd. Winners will be notified by email.
Each of the 25 winners will receive print copies of the following books by mail:
Amigurumi Toy Box: Cute Crocheted Friends, Beyond Knit and Purl, Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia, Crocheted Softies, Custom Crocheted Sweaters: Make Garments That Really Fit, Custom Fit Knit Jackets Casual to Couture, Freddie’s Blanket, Go Crochet! Afghan Design Workbook, Knits for Nerds: 30 Projects: Science Fiction, Comic Books, Fantasy, Knitting Pleats, Leisure Arts #5286, Storybook Dolls to Knit, Leisure Arts #5728, Urban Edge, Les accessoires tricot Biscotte & Cie, Little Crochet: Modern Designs for Babies and Toddlers, Loop-d-Loop Lace: More than 30 Novel Lace Designs For Knitters, Loop-d-Loop Lace: More than 30 Novel Lace Designs For Knitters, More Knitting in the Sun: 32 Patterns to Knit for Kids, My Grandmother’s Knitting: Family Stories and Inspired Knits from Top Designers, One + One: Scarves, Shawls & Shrugs: 25+ Projects from Just Two Skeins, Simply Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs for Every Day, Socktopus: 17 Pairs of Socks Worth Showing Off, Stitch London, Sweet Shawlettes, Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi, Textured Stitches: Knitted Sweaters & Accessories with Smart Details, The Big Book of Knitted Monsters, Whimsical Little Knits 3 (No substitutions)
Void where prohibited.
