Saturday, November 17, 2007

Ravelry so far,

so good. I'm liking the place. Some disorganized reflections:

  • It's fun to see what the crocheters are doing. I've never visited crochet sites, only knitting ones, so this is a whole new world. I'm glad Ravelry is mixing the two up in the pattern and project thumbnails. People are doing some cool stuff.
  • The help type people have been very helpful - when I mess things up, they either tell me how to fix it, or get it fixed, really fast. (Hopefully, I will take up less of their time going forward.)
  • I haven't made too many messes, because the whole thing is pretty easy.
  • I really like being able to look up a yarn when I'm posting a project and have the specs fill in like magic
  • I also like to look up pattern names to see if they have already been taken
  • Lot's of good serendipity potential. I went to the profile of one of the nice people who helped me, and she had lovely stranded knitting. I went to a random group and read forum posts. I looked up projects for a yarn in the stash, and linked to the profiles of a couple of people.... (is a pattern emerging?) It's all great fun and inspirational and frequently informative.

On the downside:

  • As I expected, it has great potential for procrastination enabling (see last point above)
  • I am frustrated that some of my favorite books aren't available to put on my bookshelves (pout)
  • Hmmm, that's about all I've found for downside

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I just spent an hour or so over there myself. My favorite part is being able to see what a few dozen (or hundred) others have done with a particular pattern/design I'm thinking of making. It enables me to leapfrog a couple of steps to imagine something that is the best it can be, which is not necessarily something I could do entirely on my own.

YarnThrower said...

I think it's a fine tool, too! I especially like checking out what other folks have done in terms of color schemes for some of the Dale sweaters -- some I like, some don't appeal to me as much, though still look nice, etc. A great way to get ideas for things I want to make, etc. I know what you mean, though, about the procrastination thing....

Anonymous said...

on that downside where the book might not be in Ravelry's library; i take a shot of my finished object on the cover of the book.

mym