The Fall of Ravelry and the Revival of the Blog

 At least this one. 

For more than ten years, Ravelry has been a wonderful resource for a whole lot of people in the crafting world, with it's one stop shopping for knitting and crochet patterns. Even if the actual patterns are available from another source, I would always go to Ravelry and see what other people did. How does this pattern look on people shaped like me? Are there proportion issues? What changes have people made? That all informed whether I wanted to make a thing, and often gave me good ideas for how to make my version successful. I also was motivated to provide clear notes on what I did, both as a reference for myself and for other people. Giving back to the community that I got so much from was helpful. It did kind of stifle my blogging energy though - posts about works in progress and finished projects ended up in groups and on the project page instead of a separate blog post. 

In June of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic and the slow slide of the united states government towards fascism, Ravelry rolled out a poorly beta tested site redesign and update. Many people were upset because our familiar corner of the internet was new and different and ugly. Some people found the site changes lead to visual issues, migraines, and in some cases seizures. Initially the powers that be at Ravelry declared the new site was here to stay, and while they would work on the concerns people had they would not be reverting to the old look. A week or so later they reversed that, and provided a "classic" skin available to users as a toggle in their profile (accessible after logging in). 

Initially, it appeared to be a poorly rolled out change and Ravelry was given the benefit of the doubt - the site has a small staff, the re-working was a large undertaking, and they promised that the concerns would be addressed. It became clear as time went on that Ravelry is not interested in promoting accessibility, and has been consistently silencing people who have been asking for an accessible site for years. This latest debacle is part of a pattern that the majority of users were not aware of until the larger accessibility discussions around the site update. 

I am not adversely affected by the site change (though I could write an entire post about why I hate nuRav), but I do feel that supporting a site that is actively excluding long term users is not something I'm willing to do. So I'll be limiting the amount of time I spend on the site, and stop supporting them by contributing to the pattern database. I'll probably still use the forums, but it's already evident that they are quieter now than they were before June, and I expect they will become quieter still once the classic skin is retired in March. I will miss the knowledge base in the forums, and the resource of pattern and finished project sharing. So I'm going to try posting my handwork (and probably thinky bits too) here. I don't know how regular I'll be, but at least I'll have a record of what I've made. Ideally other people will find my projects useful too. 

I did have a blog way back when, http://lifetheuniverse-andknitting.blogspot.com/. It's still there (and I thought about bringing it back) but I decided a fresh start would be nice.