Thursday, June 28, 2007

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/

11 comments:

  1. Could "Temptress" be anything but some variation on red? I remember the line from "Trouble in River City": ...scarlet women and raaagggtime, shameless music that will grab your son, your daughter, to the arms of the jungle, animal instinct, mass hysteria...

    Oh, how I miss Robert Preston!

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  2. Hiya,

    Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my socks. You asked how long they took me. I started on the 18th but ripped it out and started over on about the 20th. I finished them a couple of days ago and then washed and photo'd them. So I think it was about 6 or 7 days to knit the pair. I was surprised with how fast they knitted up.

    p.s. Something brought to mind your story about the man thong, and so I shared it with my daughter and we both had a good giggle. She said she had a better story - they were in Southern California near the border and a man was wearing his birthday suit along the freeway. Feeling light and breezy.

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  3. Yay! Blogger changed its protocol for comments - or something like that - and I can comment as ME instead of anonymous. Yipee!!

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  4. Hey Twisteds -- very thoughtful and valid points about Ravelry. I'm coming down on the side of embracing the community, but not hanging out there exclusively. I do NOT as yet have a satisfactory catalog of either projects or stash, so I'm finding R's tools very useful. I love how easy it is to upload from Flickr, too. It's also really easy to browse others' projects vs. following blog links. As you say, though, time will tell...

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  5. I love to organize, I am signing up for ravelry!

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  6. Anonymous10:22 AM

    Wow - all that from my one little question? I guess I'm not as savvy with the technology as some and that's ok. I just wanna knit! I'll leave the organizing to you!

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  7. Anonymous11:22 AM

    Thank you for your encouraging comments about my socks, Mrs. Twisted.

    You have good questions regarding Ravelry.

    Have a great weekend! (remember to take your camera)
    Punkin

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  8. I signed onto Ravelry and put up a few things, but I'm certainly not going to put everything up there--if I did, I'd be spending all day at the computer instead of actually knitting or having "a life." But it's kind of a fun way to network, and I'll see how useful it is otherwise. It is a nuisance to have to upload to Flickr before posting a pic, though! Just one more step...

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  9. i am waiting with baited breath for my darn invite to ravelry! grrrr. Good points though! I don't think I would put everything up.... I don't post everything on my blog..... Some things are better off unknown ;)

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  10. Anonymous11:34 PM

    I am loving Ravelry. Jess and Casey put together quite a site, I think. (I've been reading her blog since the CNA days and heard about the plans for it a while ago. I never thought it was be as detailed as it is!) I am not nearly as detail oriented as you are though, so I am not too concerned with most of that stuff. I just think it's fun. You get to see what otehrs are doing, what yarn they used, how they all look so different, etc. I'm building up quite a queue looking at everyones FO's though.

    -Stacey

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  11. Hi Jerry: I know this is late but I just discovered you. At first I was,"I am not going to bother with all this organization and forums and friends and such. I'm just using Ravelry as an information tool." hahahhahahaha

    It's been about a month and a half and I have completely surrendered. It started when my Grandmother-in-law gifted me with all her needles and hooks and I decided to cataloged them and then had to do all of my needles and when I looked at the completed page a light went off and I saw the benefit of doing the same with books and yarn. [I am not the organized type, I would say the very opposite of you, ps: you sound a little crazy but haven't known many people like you so I'll just say "different"*cheese*]

    I am working at getting the stash photographed. And to answer your wife's question: yes there are times I notice that I just spent 2 hours on Ravelry when I could have been knitting or updating blogs but my "me" time has been more than spent and I need to get back to the rest of my life.

    and speaking about queues, I have already filled up and emptied mine. I had a I-must-be-realistic moment and decided to only fill it with projects I really mean to do but I'm already regretting that. I liked the fantasy aspect of my list.

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