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Yep, still married.

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There has also been quite a stir in my two primary extracurricular activities (knitting and Doctor Who — gaming, sadly, has taken a back seat since everyone I gamed with has moved away or the games have dissolved). I’ve been collecting links for a Ravelry newsletter article, and will cross-post here once that’s done. (The Rav links won’t do most of you any good, but there’s a good handful of external links as well.)

Knitters get this concept. When you wake up one morning and realize you’ll never have to wear store-bought socks ever again because you can’t go to the cinema or stand around or watch TV without keeping your hands busy, you gain the visceral understanding that one small thing (a knit stitch, or a $10 donation) done over and over adds up to something big (a drawer full of socks, or $400K for charity).

In two days, the “10 Lousy Bucks” group on Ravelry raised $30,000, enough to pay off Ravelry’s startup costs.

I am so proud.

A friend of mine is a knitter. This is an actual friend not as opposed to those other “a friend of mine has a problem” friends. She loves to knit. She occasionally blogs about knitting and reads the blogs of other knitters. And she’s not the only one. There’s a huge, incredibly passionate, online community of knitters.

When one knitter (who was a photographer by day) wanted to create a photo-project of knitters sent out a request for participants, he was inundated with offers. This has led to the 1000 knitters project where he brings in knitters and photographs them as they knit a wool scarf, each person taking off where the last person finished.

The traditional image of old ladies being the only people who knit is apparently quite dated, despite advertisers telling us otherwise.

One of the interesting things about knitting is that it’s a very social hobby. The knitting circle is a centuries old entity where people (usually women both then and now) would gather together and knit and chat.

So why the blog about knitting? My friend told me about a website she frequents, www.ravelry.com, what she described as knitting 2.0. Unfortunately it’s in a closed beta so you can’t just sign up (I tried but there’s a huge waiting list due to its viral popularity). I did however borrow her log in and go have a shufty about. It’s one of the best examples I’ve seen of a community-oriented web 2.0 site.

The members of the community are passionate and involved – they can set up and participate in groups and they can post their current knitting projects online for other s to view and comment upon as the project progress. They can rate the materials they use (the types of yarn and the patterns they work from) and compare their experiences of using them with those of others. You can easily find people who’ve worked on the same pattern and ask advice.

The point is that social networks do not have to be like the facebooks or myspaces of this world – with a goal of having everyone in the world sign up. A focused involved passionate community can be much more successful. Ravelry is successful because it’s a friendly, inviting community; where people are happy to help each other out (often complete strangers) because they have something in common or can relate to each other.

Leisa Reichalt mentioned that connecting to others comes from exposing just enough of yourself to allow others to relate to you; it doesn’t matter whether it’s about an interest in social networking ot knitting and it doesn’t have to be earth shattering or phenomenal.