April 2008

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Earlier this week a the powers that be at a website (Magknits) which had offered knitting patters for free, decided to close down the site. The decision was announced on the site's homepage, with no warning to people who had perhaps been planning to download patterns.

And there were many, many of those people. I was not one of them, not because I didn't like the Magknits patterns, but because I crochet more than I knit and there's that pesky matter of 24-hour days.

I have said before that one shouldn't piss off crafters. The people who were annoyed at Magknits for the abrupt shutdown and who were also members at Ravelry have made their displeasure known in multiple threads and sparing no harsh words for the Magknits people, who were also involved in some for-profit endeavors aimed at knitters.

Ravelry is an online community primarily for knitters and crocheters, in case you don't know of it. It's still in the beta stage, meaning that as more developments are made to the site more people are welcome to join. It will eventually be open to the public, but for the moment one must indicate interest in joining then wait for an invitation. I've been a member since late December, and the more I have time to look around and join various groups, the more I like it.

It was in reading Ravelry message posts that I learned the Magknits news, and learned just how widespread the Ravelry community has become. Most, if not all, of the designers whose work was offered on Magknits are members at Ravelry. In their agreement with Magknits, they still owned all rights to their patterns. Many of them are offering those patterns free through Ravelry, which is easy for them since the man who does the coding for Ravelry had long since had means in place to allow .pdf files to be downloaded.

This isn't, of course, seamless. Not all the people who plan to offer their patterns have had a chance to get them uploaded, especially designers whose patterns needed a little tweaking. Not all the people who want the patterns are Ravelry members. And there is still much anger.

But it is definitely a wonderful thing that Ravelry has a system in place to make the patterns available if the designers so choose.

If you're a knitter or crocheter who wants to become a member at Ravelry, just go to the site's homepage and sign up. Membership is free. My username there is Rebeccaworks (note the cap), and I welcome friend requests.