I’ve been spending a lot of time on Ravelry recently (Pascale in Ithaca) having lots of fun matching up my stash to patterns.
The search features of Ravelry are superb and have just been upgraded to nothing short of fantastic. Just love love love. Ravelry members are totally spoiled for any other networking site – PR? eat your heart out, that’s like comparing dial-up to broadband and as for as for Etsy… that search function needs some serious attention; the other day I tried to find out if there was an Etsy shop in a 20 mile radius of my area that sold roving. A simple intersection of two queries but apparently beyond the capabilities of Etsy to provide an answer.
Anyway, enough with the griping, perhaps Ravelry can one day extend its doors or build a site for the sewing community….
One of the Ravelry features I’m loving a lot is the “pattern recommendation experiment”. It really is a great way of diving into the vastness of the Ravelry database. It made me realize how often I come across patterns that are very reminiscent of each other, maybe it’s the look au courant, maybe it’s one designer channeling another designer, perhaps one designer reinterpreting themselves or obsessing with a theme (think Norah Gaughan and hexagons). I’d love to know more about the algorithm behind this feature, sometimes it works amazingly well and sometimes comes up empty handed. In the spirit of the pattern recommendation experiment I’d like to offer some of my own pattern observations I’ve noticed in my travels and hence I present this new series – “Separated at Birth?”.
First up is the following. On the left is Chorley Wrap by Marie Wallin from Rowan 46 (published 2009). On the right, we have Twinkle’s Highlander Stole from Twinkle’s Town and Country Knits (published 2008).
Posted by pascalenary 
