Ravelry Refresh

It’s that time of year to start fresh. Or is that just me? I want everything in my life completed, sorted, or started anew. Nothing “old” can sit dormant. I’m turning over everything!

One thing that I knew needed a good purge was my Ravelry page. My queue and my favorites hadn’t been looked over in a long time. I KNEW there were patterns there I’m no longer interested in making. And that’s okay!

Purge is not really a positive word. It suggests that the things that we need to clear out are negative. The patterns aren’t bad, they are lovely. They just no longer fill a need for me. {The need to pretend that I will definitely make them in the near future.} So instead of a purge, I approached this as a refresh. Fluff up my Ravelry page! Dust off some old favorites, stow away those “maybes” into the favorites pile, and let go of that poncho I wanted to make in 2009. Here’s my approach.

Use the hashtag #ravelryrefresh on Instagram to show off your hard work!

One. Clear everything out of the queue.

I had 29 items in my queue, which wasn’t too bad since I did a clear out less than a year ago. However, those pattern dreams had come and gone {along with my #2018makenine} and new ones are taking their place! I made sure each one of the patterns I still enjoyed, but didn’t see myself making anytime soon, were favorited and tagged, and then cleared out my queue.

Only one pattern remained- Like a Cloud by Joji Locatelli. This is a recent member of the queue and I still want to make it desperately!

Now… it’s not time to add to the queue yet… even though it’s tempting. The next step is to tackle those favorites. Eep! We’ll be back to the queue later as a delicious reward.

Two. Review your favorites.

Do not lie to yourself. Your favorites have changed. It’s okay, love. They’re supposed to change! Before you start to cry because you have 1394409385.5k favorites, let’s establish some ground rules.

1. Follow all the steps in order and do not go down a rabbit hole looking at Knitty.com patterns from 2013 {guilty}.
2. Take the number of pages in your favorites {mine was 21 pages} and divide it by 10. Ahhh that’s better right. Every so many pages {your number divided by 10} we are going to get up and do something. Grab a sip of water, eat an m&m, save the rest for another day- hey I’m not judging. Just make a plan that works for you!
3. Start with the easy stuff. Go to the very last page of your favorites. Have a laugh! Then start hitting that delete button. With these older patterns it will be easy to make quick decisions. Watch those page numbers shrink down at top speed!
4. Take your breaks to reward yourself and DO NOT spiral into a entrelac scarf induced coma.

Three. Stock your queue.

You did it! Your favorites and queue are refreshed, so let’s jazz them up a bit. You probably spotted some gems in your favorites, so go ahead and add them to your queue. You can use the features in queue if you want {like adding stash yarn or notes} or not- up to you! This is the fun part so reward yourself!

Four. Organize your favorites.

Let’s not pretend that these favorites won’t get out of hand again. You know what happens when you go searching for just the right lace shawl that has beads and uses alpaca and your favorites number doubles {just me?} . Tagging your favorites is one of the most useful Ravelry features out there. From now on, when you favorite an item take the time to add a couple tags to it. For example, when I added Like a Cloud to my favorites I tagged it with attributes I will later look for when I’m itching to start a new project- sweater, cardigan, mohair. Now when I go to look at some of my favorite cardigans, this pattern will show up.

As for what’s already in your favorites, it’s going to take some time to label. Follow the same steps we used for reviewing them to add tags. It’s important you don’t refresh AND label your favorites at the same time because it will take twice as long. A little accomplished, a little reward. And then we move on. Yes?

How does your Ravelry page look now? Mine feels so much lighter! It’s like I was actually wearing all those failed sweaters I had in my queue and now they’ve all vanished! Hopefully your queue and favorites are now functional and pleasing to the YOU that exists at this very moment. Let’s make this a yearly thing? Maybe each fall and spring season? You do you.

You’re the boss of your knitting.

Love in stitches,

Knitty Natty