A FOYAL-ing We Go!

We're nearing the middle of December, fiber friends! We're close to running out of 2024! 

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty much living over at the Fasten Off Yarnalong Discord server right now. Now, is anyone surprised by that?

If you answered yes, welcome! I know you're new here. Returning fiber enthusiasts will recall that each November and December I become very animated about the Fasten Off Yarnalong. 

But what is the Fasten Off Yarnalong? I hear someone in the back asking. And I'm so glad you did!

The Fasten Off Yarnalong, aka FOYAL (rhymes with royal), is at its heart a multiplatform yarn along celebrating some of the talented independent knitting and crochet, including both Tunisian crochet and machine knitting, pattern designers! 

What do you mean by multiplatform yarn along? You can participate in the yarnalong on any or all of your social media platforms. This year we have volunteers staffing the @FastenOffYAL accounts on Bluesky, the Discord server, Facebook (page, not group), Instagram, Mastodon, Tumblr, and TikTok! There are games and giveaways happening on most of these, and lots of fun content featuring the work of the 93 participating designers, and highlights of what crafters are working on from those same designers.

FOYAL kicks off every year with a two week sale on a selection of patterns from the participating designers; some designers offer their entire catalog of off Ravelry accessible patterns!!

Why the stress on off Ravelry patterns? To be plain about it, since Ravelry launched NuRav in June of 2020, many crafters can't use or can only spend limited time there. I wrote extensively about the effects of NuRav over the course of the summer of 2020 through to the early taking away of "Classic Rav" in March of 2021 that was letting some of us be there for short amounts of time. 

I was onsite the morning NuRav was suddenly launched. I went down with a two day migraine after about 20 minutes. I was nauseous. I was miserable. And it wasn't until people started asking questions on other places like Twotter that I realized it wasn't something I did or ate. I don't suffer from migraines as a rule! This was completely out of left field. I wasn't the worst impacted by any means either. The WIPinsanity blog (the news and views of fellow FOYAL organizer, Kathleen Sperling) documented sooo many things that I wasn't keeping up with recording. I was at the same time launching and building this site, learning from very baby-basic coding to pull my newly minted Payhip shop into these pages. I wanted and needed my own space, where I would be less likely to be blindsided out of the work that was giving me creative freedom and a purpose after losing the ability to work a regular job after my injury.

FOYAL was launched in November of 2020 to be an event parallel to the Indy Giftalong, which is still going strong on Ravelry. It was meant to highlight some of the designers who couldn't participate in the GAL due to medical reasons, and give a bit of community to the now adrift crafters.

That's where it started, and happily it's caught on! There are several designers this year (and years past) that participate in both the GAL and FOYAL, which is pretty cool. Both events are about promoting indy designers and gathering crafters together to craft. 

So every November and December I take a step back from my designing and roll up my metaphorical sleeves to help make this year's FOYAL a great one. I'm one of the organizers, yes. But I just love our community. And not to knock any of the other platforms (the Prize Picker reels on Instagram are a personal highlight) but the FOYAL Discord server is seriously so fun! Because of the set up, we're able to host longer runs of the various games, which means more prizes to give out. I'll let you in on a very ill-kept secret of the FOYAL (especially on Discord; everyone there knows): I'm the Prize Pixie 🧚‍♀️ If you've ever gotten a pattern prize email from FastenOffYALGames and there's a yarn ball or pixie at the end of the signature line, that was me. Hi, great to see you outside of your inbox *waves*

Ok, in addition to our social media platforms and the games and giveaways, because that's just not enough, the Fasten Off YAL website has all kinds of information about the event and our participating designers but the crowning jewel is the database.

The FOYAL database contains as many off Ravelry designs as possible for each of our participating designers. But not only are these all collected in one place, there's a fully filterable search that will find just about any idea you might have to make. And not only is this year's search up for the event timeframe, it's there all year. You saw a shawl pattern in November but decided to get the glove pattern to make for Aunt Gloria right away instead. You can come back in May or July and find that shawl again!

The database and the search are the result of three things: Kathleen's incredible mind for coding, and the data entry volunteers and/or designers who make sure everything looks right, and then the site testing volunteers who check out new search features and the links to the various patterns before the event opens! Cool right?

And that, my fiber friends, is all from me today! I'll pop some FOYAL links in before I hit post. 

Yours in yarn and a FOYALing good time ;)

Síle

The Fasten Off Yarnalong website: https://www.fastenoffyal.com/🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Discord server: https://discord.gg/Vz6mpzQz🔗

My Ask-Me-Anything thread from earlier today (on the Discord server): https://discord.com/channels/769735278872100894/1311559461646766121🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Bluesky account: https://bsky.app/profile/fastenoffyal.bsky.social🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FastenOffYAL/🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/FastenOffYAL🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Mastodon account: https://mastodon.art/@fastenoffyal🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Pinterest boards: https://www.pinterest.com/fastenoff🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fastenoffyal🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Tumblr account: https://www.tumblr.com/fastenoffyal🔗

The Fasten Off Yarnalong Youtube account: https://www.youtube.com/@fastenoffyal🔗