Ravelry.com: the first online knitting community

The Internet and knitting go together a lot more like cheese and wine, than chalk and cheese these days. Want a free pattern? Look online. Want to find just the right yarn? Look online. Now those with their knitty ears to the (virtual) ground are starting to hear rumblings that something fabulous and yarn-based is thundering our way. That mysterious something is Ravelry.com.

The Ravelry folks bill their up-coming knitting user-driven online community as “a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration.” If it promises to be as fantastic as it looks from the screenshots, then it is going to be THE place to be for online knitting goodness.

At the moment the place is being tested out by a few lucky folks who got in there first. You can register yourself in the queue right now, but it could take a while (I am #21905 on the list, having signed up at the end of July, and there are a humongous 12925 ahead of me in line). Will it be worth the wait?

It certainly seems like it is. Screenshots promise you can:
• Organize your projects, stash, needles
• Show off your work
• Share your ideas and techniques
• Find new designs and yarns
• Make friends
• Try new things

You can also find free patterns, join in knitalongs, have a rant in the forums, review yarns, chat about spinning, dyeing and all the joys that go with it, queue patterns and yarns you find online, review and discuss books, and possibly a whole stash of stuff they haven’t even let us peek at yet.

They also have an excellent office dog, which for some reason makes it even better.

It seems like a good idea to join the queue for ravelry.com right now, before another couple of thousand find out about it and get in front of you.

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