Ravelry Use & Help

What is Ravelry?

Ravelry is an online database and community for knitters, crocheters, weavers, spinners, and fiber fans worldwide. It lists a huge number of patterns and yarns in an easily searchable way, and gives designers an easy-to-use platform for electronic sales of their patterns direct to consumers.

Ravelry is a free service and no account is required to get your free RCYC patterns. However, you may want to create a free account to access all of Ravelry’s wonderful information and services. You can learn more about Ravelry here.

See all Rose City Yarn Crawl publications on Ravelry.

Using Ravelry Download Codes

Getting a Download Code

During the Crawl, each participating shop has one or two featured patterns (either knit, or knit and crochet). Visit a shop during the Crawl and make any purchase to get a free Ravelry download of that shop’s featured pattern(s). Ravelry download codes for all shops always expire 2 weeks after the crawl ends. This allows sales of the patterns to revert from supporting the RCYC (which is a separate organization) back to supporting shops or designers.

Using a Download Code

There are several ways to use a Ravelry download code that will all work equally well. So don’t worry if a shop gives you instructions that differ slightly from what you see below. Here is one way to redeem your Ravelry download codes:

  1. If you have a Ravelry account, log in now! This will ensure that your pattern is saved to your Ravelry library so you can find it later. If you do not have a Ravelry account, that is totally ok, too.

  2. Click here to go to the RCYC’s download code redemption page: https://www.ravelry.com/redeem/rose-city-yarn-crawl

  3. Enter the code and then click “use this coupon”.

  4. You will see a shopping cart that shows the regular price of the pattern, a discount of that entire amount, and a $0.00 balance due. Click checkout.

  5. You will now see a confirmation page. Follow instructions shown on-screen to open the pdf, email it to yourself, directly download it, print it, or save it to Dropbox. If you are logged in to Ravelry the pattern will be saved in your library. Remember that if you are not logged in to Ravelry, the website has no way to know who you are and remember your purchases, so you will need to save the pattern pdf where you want it to be now.

Repeat steps 2-5 for all of your download codes. Remember that codes expire 2 weeks after the Crawl, so don’t wait too long.

Pattern Collections

Each year the Rose City Yarn Crawl assembles a pattern collection containing all the participating shops’ featured patterns. This pattern collection is available for purchase on Ravelry for a discounted price compared to buying all of the patterns individually.

A pattern collection is slightly different than an e-book because each pattern it contains is a separate pdf, whereas for an e-book all the patterns are combined into one large file. Based on feedback from participants, the pattern collection seems to work better because it will allow you to print or download patterns one at a time as you are working on them.

Because a pattern collection is composed of many separate files, though, you may need to scroll down to view all of them in your Ravelry library. By default you may only see the top of the list of files. Scroll down to see the rest.

Mystery Alongs

We use Ravelry to distribute the weekly clues for the annual mystery alongs. If you purchase a mystery along pattern on Ravelry, each week when a new clue is released you will automatically get the new clue. Around the beginning of March, each design will be released in its entirety as a regular, non-mystery pattern. However, the contact settings that each user has set up in their Ravelry account will affect what messages you receive about this update!

If you have a Ravelry account (recommended for the mystery alongs), you will always be able to go to your Ravelry Library (listed under “My Notebook”) and look for the “Update Available” icon on top of the mystery along pattern image. Each clue will be a separate pdf.

You should always get an email notice about new clues. If you don’t see it, please check your email spam folder. To see what email address you have linked to your Ravelry account, log in to Ravelry, then click on your profile image in the very top right of the screen and select “edit profile”.

You should also get a Ravelry message if you have that feature enabled. To see if you have Ravelry messaging enabled, log in to Ravelry, then click on your profile image in the very top right of the screen and select “edit profile”. See if the “accept Ravelry messages” box is checked.