My friend Debra sent me an invitation a few weeks ago to join Ravelry, the social networking site for knitters and although I haven’t done much more than set up a page and post my one-and-only sweater, I’m sort of fascinated by the convergance of knitting and social networking.
While I’ve fallen in love with knitting, as much for the magical way it stops that buzzing in my brain after a long day at work as for the actual product I’m creating, I’m not one of those people who wants to go hang out at the knitting store with a group of other women. I hate groups — I admit it. And by nature I’m the sort of person who just wants to figure it out myself — however, there’s something interesting about the cultural revival of knitting and the way that knitting circles seem to be the new book group of our age. I think knitting groups are great — I just haven’t gotten over my own reluctance to leave home and my instinctive aversion to group activities to go join one.
And hence, Ravelry. Which looks very cool even though I’ve only scratched the surface. Someplace to troll for cool patterns or see what yarns other people are using and when you get stuck there’s someplace to go post a question. Very interesting.
Our park groups we go to are sometimes up to half filled with knitters. So the kids run off to play and the moms sit around chatting and knitting. There’s one woman I’m very impressed with who can stand up, or walk slowly, while talking and knitting at the same time! And she has four kids. Obviously, with the third kid you must grow an extra brain or something, because I cannot figure out how she does it.
If my friend Nina is any proof, after the 3rd kid, you simply learn to function inside a bubble of chaos and noise that would defeat the rest of us. It’s like you grow some extra multi-tasking lobe of the brain or something …
Ravelry is great fun for knitters and a great way to meet people with similar interests. It’s an amazing phenomenon. But considering your gardening bent, you might like myfolia.com as well. It’s a new one, that’s very similar to Ravelry in overall concept, but for gardening. I just recently discovered and decided this might be the perfect way for me to remember everything that I plant!
This is great! I am going to join that social network asap. I JUST got to knitting a year ago when I found a GREAT knitting book. I am sharing this because I love it, and want to turn other knitters on to it. Its called “Sadie Shapiro’s Knitting Book”. Click my name to get to the author’s book blog!
Trudy B.