Oh, dear.
I think I'm going to have to make some kind of Rule of Ravelry - like, it's for weekends only, or something like that. Because today - which is a day I have no classes and really technically don't have to be here, but which I use as a catch-up and get-ahead day, has been spent like this:
check Ravelry to see if anyone "friended" me
grade a few papers
add another project to Ravelry
grade a few more papers
add some of the books I have
prep a little for teaching tomorrow
check again to see if anyone "friended" me or if there's anyone I "know" that I can add to my list
prep some more
add to the queue
grade a few papers.
Oh, I suppose the madness will die down once I get my backlog of projects loaded in. But I will say it's good for the ego to load up a couple of my recent favorite socks and realize they're both ones I "designed," inasmuch as plugging a stitch pattern into a fairly standard 64 or 72 stitch sock is designing.
I will say - I will not abandon the blog in favor of Ravelry. As much as I like it thus far, there's really not a place to write long, thoughtful, pondering posts about STUFF like I am often given to here.
And you know? Being able to write about just STUFF is important to me. So even though I commented months ago that I feared Ravelry was going to kill the blogging star (in a fit of tweeness; I was alluding to that old "Video killed the radio star" song which was supposedly the FIRST video ever played on MTV), I don't think that will happen to bloggers who like to write, or like to include other glimpses of their lives.
I know a few days (maybe as much as a week ago) someone on KR asked about "what should I post on a blog" and someone else smacked down with "I don't like blogs that have life-stuff on them; a GOOD blog (or at least that was what was implied) is all knitting"
Um...actually, my favorite blogs AREN'T all knitting - they are places where the blogger talks about her research, or her teaching, or her work at the library, or her garden, or Classics, or cats, or cooking....I like more of a well-rounded picture of a person than just "here is this thing I made" and "here is this other thing I made."
Ravelry is a wonderful adjunct to the blog (I will just have to be sure not to let myself get sucked down the rabbit-hole of writing up every project I've ever knit and crocheted on it, or at least only do it at times that I'm otherwise unoccupied), but I don't think for those of us who like to write rambling, speculative posts it will take the place of the blog.
or at least I hope not. I hate thinking about a society where pretty pictures and short, "soundbite" statements have entirely edged out the carefully crafted paragraph and essay.
4 comments:
I agree, blogs are much more interesting when they are not just a summary of projects (of whatever kind).
-- Grace in MA
I have to confess that I rush through the knitting posts although I do love to see the pictures. I don't knit so knitting is like a kind of magic to me. I like your long rambling "stuff" posts best. Don't ever stop.
A "good blog" can be anything - focused on one topic or a little of everything. It's hard to say what makes a blog "good" but there's really no single formula. What makes a book good? What makes a movie good? It's a number of different things.
Ditto the unique blog and it's wide scope, it's vista, it's opportunity to organize thoughts, share feelings and practice using our beautiful language. I have an acquaintance who told me she never read my blog because I write so much on it and so often. I didn't tell her I am glad she doesn't now any more about me than what she thinks she knows. But I thought it.
What Ravelry might cut into is the Knitters Review Forum or any yahoo groups one follows. But there – who cares. Go where you like – that's my motto with the internet. But like you – mostly on weekends and nights when I have no other things going on.
What someone wants out of a blog is such a matter of taste--some of the places I visit regularly, I skip over the political stuff, but the same bloggers get emails from people asking for more politics. No way to win that one, really.
I suspect that Ravelry would cut more into those "project-only" blogs than it would cut into something like yours, where you have multiple non-knitting things going on, and where a good percentage of reader interest is in you, and how you think about the world.
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