Ravelry

Recently when hunting for knitting information online I would hear vague whispering about ravelry.com. I would see it mentioned quietly and without fanfare, without much detail, without anything that would make me want to track it down and see what it was about.

 

Until I was bored a couple weeks ago. I decided to search for this mysterious website. And I found it (funny that). I looked around and was instantly excited. It's a knitter's paradise, and it's an exclusive one right now too.

 

First thing I did was put myself on the waiting list, which took a couple weeks to move up to my name. And when that happened yesterday, all hope of not spending large amounts of time on the internet vanished with the harmless little email they sent.

 

This site is amazing. I can: look at patterns (free, non-free, in books, anywhere) sorted by type, yarn weight, difficulty, popularity with other knitters, designer, or difficulty. I can manage my projects from in progress, scrapping, or finished. Rate them, rate the yarn, find others with the same project. I can manage my yarn stash, see what I have, find suitable projects for it, and possibly even get rid of the stuff I don't like. I can manage my needles to see what I actually have, what I need, and print it out to take with me. I can manage my books in the same way. I can talk to other knitters anywhere based on any search criteria you can think of, and affiliate myself with knitting groups and yarn stores.

 

This is absolutely wonderful and terrible at the same time. For while I am an organizational fiend, I am obsessive and don't have this much time to spare! Hopefully after the initial set up phase I will be able to sit back and use it when I need it, but right now it is consuming all my free time.

 

This is possibly the best knitting related thing to happen to me since I finished my first project. Now . . . back to describing my yarn stash . . .