Ravalry and my ramblings

I received my invitation to Ravelry a few nights ago. Are you using it? What do you think of everyone in the world knowing what you are doing? Or what you plan to do? It's sort of like a double edge sword don't you think? How much influence will other people’s projects have on your own creativity? I guess if you are a knitter who makes the patterns in the magazines using the same yarn including the same colowaycolor as the picture, it will just be another avenue to find more ideas. I think if you want to publish your ideas then you would have to restrict these projects from view. Now don't get me wrong, I love the whole idea but Mrs. Twisted posed a great question to me, "will you spend more time in the process of organizing and looking at other peoples projects and ques than knitting itself?" "is your time better spent knitting than worrying about what everyone else in the world is doing or if you have the most projects done?" You know us guys, it's always a competition about something. I had to think to myself and just wonder. I already have my stash residing in a large spreadsheet and my needles as well. The projects are in a binder like other fellow knitters do. So, what will this do for me? I do love the forum section and yet I belong to yahoo groups for certain sub-sectors of knitting and even some I haven't tried yet but just want to get my feet wet. Am I feeding the frenzy of being the first wave of people to do something? Yes I do enjoy being on the front side of technology and change but is this for me?

OK so what do I really think, the stash portion will export to an Excel file but you can ' t import one. hmmmmm..... Being the Engineer guy, I love to organize and plot and plan things to death. My stash list looks crazy with all the detail, but the detail has helped to retain some history of lots of otherwise lost info. I don't want to copy paste or re-type this. I went to the forum and posed the question and was instantly informed that they are already working on that feature. Positive result I guess just by the fact that I was answered. The needle inventory was a little strange but I already see that they are working on that. I love the people portion because you may find knit friends that you didn't know existed in your area or with similar obsessions for certain fiber. It has sort of a myspace feel to it. I was contacted just after joining to be a friend and was caught off guard but quickly realized that they were just looking for interesting blogs to read and used to live in the area and thought it would be fun to keep up with what we were doing locally. Thank you for the compliment, but I hope this little diatribe doesn't change your opinion too much. Will I use it? embrace it? I think so... I'm slowly building my stash one manufacturer at a time and move my flicker photos of my stash. Yes I photograph each hank or ball or group of balls. Just think to yourself if you wanted to see what was used to make a gifted project 2 years ago and you loved loved loved the fiber, how could you replicate it or use it on another project entirely with the same or similar results?. How else could you see the difference of Electric Purple, Vibrant purple, Royal Purple, Plum, Eggplant, and a half dozen other names some creative person uses to describe the same color yarn? What about the color Eternal? or Temptress? What about the companies who just use numbers to identify like Manos and Koigu??? I know - just a tad OCD. I know I'm just trying to justify in my own head why I do this stuff but it's just who I am. Watch out Ravalry here I come. I'll be warming up your in-box with suggestions. Last thing here, Congrats to the sharp individuals who created this, I was told it was a Knitter and her hubby, a software guy who are probably looking to sell the site soon after the release from beta version and retire like the Google and YouTube people. well, maybe on a slightly smaller scale. I hope they are looking ahead to port this site to work with scrap booking and quilting and all the other crafting people out there. Well that's my opinion, take it for what it's worth and $3.85 and buy a cup of Coffee. Oh if you want to jump on before it runs you over here is the link. http://www.ravelry.com/