Ravelry

About

Ravelry is a social network for specifically for the fiber arts knitting, weaving, crocheting and more. Users can share ideas, work, materials or pieces that can be purchased through the site's marketplace. In 2019, the site received national attention for banning support of United States President Donald Trump.

History

In late 2006, Casey and Jessica Forbes registered the website Ravelry.com, a website for fiber arts. The following year, they launched a public beta the following year.^[1][2] They wrote:

Jess had been a knitter and a blogger for a while, and, because she was an active blogger, she knew that there was all this great information out there from other fiber lovers – but with the growing number of crochet and knitting blogs, finding that information just kept getting harder! It was getting frustrating for her to try and find information about the patterns and yarns that she was interested in using. Casey thought that he would be able to build a website that could solve her problems, so they started working on it together, introducing it to a few friends at a time.

Features

The Ravelry website allows fiber artists to upload a variety of different craft-related content. Users can sort by patterns, yarns, people, as well as store their own projects in their own "notebook."^[3]

In addition to its primary function of allowing users to upload and share their own works, the site features a social area that includes Instagram style layouts for finished work and forums. There is also a marketplace area for them to sell work.

Highlights

Donald Trump Support Ban

On June 23rd, 2019,^[4] the website published a new policy that would ban "Support of Trump or his Administration." In the post, they made sure to announce that work would never be deleted from the site, but those that were asked to remove images from Ravelry may have their work hidden. They wrote, "Note that your project data will never be deleted. We will never delete your Ravelry project data for any reason and if a project needs to be removed from the site, we will make sure that you have access to your data. If you are permanently banned from Ravelry, you will still be able to access any patterns that you purchased. Also, we will make sure that you receive a copy of your data."

The clarified their position: "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy."

They continue to state that members are still free to support Donald Trump if they so choose, but they are not allowed to speak about it on Ravelry.

That day, the site tweeted^[5] about the ban, received more than 74,000 likes, 17,000 comments and 12,000 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Some praised the site's decision. Twitter^[6] user @JoyceWhiteVance tweeted, "I’m proud to have been a member of Ravelry since 2007, member no. 6377 out of approximately 8,000,000 knitters & crocheters who are members today. Same folks who knit hats for the women’s march taking the lead on calling out hate." The post received more than 9,500 likes and 1,600 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, center).

Others criticized the ban. Twitter^[7] user @RitaPanahi wrote, "How very fascist of you to dehumanise half the country, including millions of migrants/POC, as deplorables" (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References