Ravelry
January 3, 2008 § 4 Comments
I’m already feeling stupid for asking this… But, here we go anway…
Can someone explain Ravelry to me? I don’t get it. When other bloggers leave links to stuff in their ravelry account, the viewer has to log in. But one can’t log in unless one has been invited and has an account.
So… what I don’t understand is this. If only those who are members can actually see the pages, what’s the point of having an account? It seems like a regular blog and flickr is more friendly towards sharing stuff with other people. Can someone please explain this to me?
Thanks so much! I do want to understand. Really, I do.
Bloomin' Workshop 
Social networking sites are all the rage at the moment. I am not nearly motivated/organized enough to do anything with my account so I don’t really have any first hand experience or anything. People really seem to like the stash organization feature and the pattern finder is very cool. You are right though, blogs and flickr are much more public-friendly as far as communication goes. I think of Ravelry more as a tool – it will never take the place of blogging for me.
It is a social networking sight, but it also has a zillion patterns listed and you can see how they turned out for other people, see notes, etc. I find it very useful for finding a new project, yarn etc. I really like it, but it is kind of consuming. The reason you can’t create an account automatically is b/c they are still in beta but we hope that changes soon. You can always put yourself on the “list” to be invited.
I love Ravelry and have met so many wonderful knitters. There are so many helpful places to go. For instance, you have a yarn and love it, but have no idea why you bought it… what to do with it – do a search in Ravelry and see what others did with it. They will have photos included so you can see what happens with different color combos, they also include comments where instructions might be misleading or down right wrong.
I belong to a couple of groups in there which include an Indiana group and we are having our second meetup this month. Last time it was 15 knitters getting together sharing their latest projects and ideas. So much talent and a lot of fun! You can do both blogs and Ravelry, but Ravelry is a very quick way to find the knitting info you need or help.
I just joined Ravelry. The reason it’s by “invitation” is, I suspect, that they have to gradually add users as to not overload their servers and system. It’s a new social networking site, as others have said, but it allows you to link back to your own blog. It only took a couple weeks between when I asked to join and when I got my login credentials. Then you add your blog name, url, and off you go.
The benefit as I see to just blogs and photo sharing is that it offers you a huge way to find more similarly minded folks by putting yourself in the middle of the network rather than waiting for them to find your blog.
And I’m all for free patterns. I don’t get having to pay for patterns, which I believe are just regurgitations and slight modifications of patterns from days gone by anyway.
Hope that helps.
Claire