Rip it up and start again

I spent a marvelous hour or so last fall at a yarn store in San Francisco called Artfibers. The owners formulate their own yarn bases and hand-dye them to produce a large loft of amazing, unique fibers. When I walked out after a happy morning swatching, I had 400 yards of Ming, a half-merino half-silk blend in a colorway that reminded me of bronze, copper, gold and amethyst.

Last night, having bound off an enormous Malabrigo wrap destined for my mother-in-law's shoulders, I couldn't wait to start another project. A scarf, a rectangular scarf that I can knit on my beloved Signature straights, worsted weight, large and satisfying stitches in a yarn that would be a treat for my hands and eyes.

I started out by looking for inspiration in my Ravelry stash and queue, but when I visited my yarn wall to poke through the yarn possibilities in person, the Artfibers cone practically fell into my hands. What better indulgence, I thought?I gathered the yarn and my needle roll and headed back to the living room to find a pattern.

I didn't expect that search to last all night and most of the next morning. Here are some of the patterns I tried.



Serafine by Molly Whiddon. I saw some lovely projects showing how this clusters and highlights variegated yarn. But after starting it, I was unhappy and wasn't sure why.



Tipsy Rib Scarf by Pamela Wynne. Very promising, since this pattern was created for this specific yarn. But I only got a couple of rows in before I made a mistake, and since I wasn't sure that a simple knit/purl pattern was what I wanted, I moved on.



One-Row Handspun Scarf by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. The one pictured is by Raveler purpleemma in Ming. Isn't it beautiful? I kept coming back to this, hoping it would work. I love one-row lace patterns. They're what I so often crave when I crave a rectangular worsted-weight scarf on straight needles knitting experience. And this wasn't the only one I tried.



Sinful Ribbed Scarf by Classic Elite. Nope.



Swish Scarf by Lisa Sisk. Nope, but this is the one that made me realize what was wrong with all these patterns I was rejecting. The fringe you see is made by knitting six stitches in stockinette on one side of the scarf, then dropping them all at the end. The lace pattern wasn't doing it for me at all, but the stockinette was gorgeous. Aha! Need to look for patterns with major swaths of stockinette!

Unfortunately, stockinette and rectangular straight-needle scarves go together like ... things that don't go together well. Stockinette rolls up from side to side, and scarves have to lay flat. Was it possible that this yarn, which begged for beautiful columns of knit-stitch V's to show off its iridescence, would be incompatible with my desire for a simple unshaped scarf?



The Prismatic Scarf by Huan-Hua Chye. I thought this would be the one. There's three knit stitches between those slipped-with-yarn-in-front bars. But the bars were distracting rather than enhancing. They looked messy. I needed even more stockinette.



SciWiNoNa (Scarf With No Name) by weezalana. Ahhhhh. Finally. A scarf with wide stockinette panels (five stitches across) and no yarn-overs or slipped stitches to detract from them.



As soon as I got past the garter border and started the pattern, I knew my yarn had found its pattern at last. The metallic sheen to the fibers, the deep tones of the colors, all glowed in the smooth stockinette surface.

One of the great virtues of knitting is its ability to be unravelled and worked again. I knit the first inch or two of this scarf half a dozen times in the past twenty-four hours. For a material so precious, it was worth the trial and error to find its proper match. Trust your instincts, learn from your mistakes. Rip it up and start again. The investment is small -- just time and effort. The reward is beauty, and the pleasure of making it. Few activities afford so many opportunities to do it over and get it right.

Endings and beginnings

I'm in Chicago for the spring board meeting of the AAR. This is my sixth and last spring board meeting, at least on this shift. I joined the board in 2007 as a regionally-elected director. I voted myself off the board in a governance restructuring in 2010. I was asked to stay on for two years as treasurer until an election could occur for that position. And here I am nearing the last meeting with this shifting, ever-changing group I joined so innocently when my daughter was two years old.

Earlier this week, I found out that another position of responsibility I've held since 2007 is coming to an end. The Ravelry Welcome Wagon has sent an individual welcome message to every new member of the site for the past five years. Almost two million people have joined the site in that time. I've personally sent over 27,000 welcome messages. It's a daily ritual for me -- open two tabs, post in the thread for my designated letter of the alphabet indicating where I started, copy the welcome message template from Evernote, and start clicking on the new user page until I reach the person I ended with last time. I've developed a system that I can do very quickly. And yet I reflect every time I click the "send message" button how special it is that we do this intentionally as users, rather than having the system automated.

Such a system is unsustainable at a large enough scale, however, and the pioneers whose brainchild the Welcome Wagon is have decided to shut down the effort rather than try to keep the ship afloat in increasingly high seas. I'm glad to see that the volunteers don't question their resolve or their decision. We're counting down to the last welcomes coming on May 1, and celebrating the legacy we've left for hundreds of thousands of knitters and crocheters.

I like being in positions of responsibility and influence. I like being in positions of service that make a difference for lots of people. And I'm leaving a couple of those positions soon. There are plenty of other things I have planned, that the demise of these responsibilities will help make time for. But I'll miss them. It will be painful seeing April and August and November roll by without anticipating a trip to see the AAR staff and my board colleagues, without strategizing and sympathizing about board issues and politics. It will be a lack and a loss every day to click over to my Ravelry tab without the need to spend a few minutes copying the welcome template into a couple of dozen private messages, replacing my name in the salutation with the user I'm welcoming. I will miss that more than anyone can imagine. It was a perspective on a site and a community I dearly love, that kept me grounded and connected and allowed me to answer a thousand random questions, showing people that there are people on this site, not just forms and forums and bewildering folkways.

I'm going to need an avenue of service to replace these. Stay tuned. I predict it won't take me too long to say yes to some other massive endeavor that will eat up six years of my life.

2,000,000

Back in November 2010, Ravelry -- the greatest social networking site ever created, and I'm not just saying that because it is built around knitting -- hit one million registered users. Yesterday, Leap Day 2012, the two million mark was reached.

I had so much fun watching the countdown and celebration that I decided to collect my favorite parts of it in a Storify story.  Here it is!

Baby steps online

Cady Gray has been wanting her own Ravelry account for some time.  I've been posting her projects on my account, and she beams with pride at every "heart" (favorite mark) or comment they get.  About a year ago the Ravelry team floated the idea of a parent-monitored account especially for minor children, with the ability for the parent to see the child's activity and limit their access to parts of the site with potentially mature content.  But it doesn't appear that feature is anywhere on the near horizon, so after setting CG a goal that she met, I made an account for her.  I know the password and can log in as her anytime to see what she's posting and who she's talking to.

It's her first social networking account, or maybe second.  Earlier this summer I donated to a Kickstarter campaign for Tinkatolli and in return got a membership to that game-world for Cady Gray.  She can make "buddies" on that site and chat with them, and she takes very seriously the rules that are displayed to her while the game is loading (never give out personal information, be kind to other Tinkas).  The interactions delight her; every time somebody talks to her Tinka, invites her to their "pad" (a personal space you can decorate), or gives her a gift, she comes running to me bursting with happiness.

The same thing has happened on Ravelry.  I suggested she use her Tinka's name, and made her a Ravatar out of her Tinka's picture.  She looked forward from the moment of her first login to the welcome message she'd get from a Welcome Wagon member.  I suggested she post in the group for newbies, and when she received a reply or two, she clearly felt like a real Raveler.  She made a faux pas, posting a generic "hello" message on one of the Big 6 forums, and got some disagrees, which dismayed her.  I explained to her that anytime you come into a new situation, it takes a little experience to learn the rules (my example was the etiquette surrounding the tire swing on the school playground), and then I posted in the thread gently redirecting her to a more appropriate forum, and the thread was archived.  After listening in on some Harry Potter chatter in the Welcome Mat forum, she asked how she could get involved in some of the HP-related crafting being discussed, and received a kind explanation which she immediately relayed to me in great detail (as a newly minted expert on the Harry Potter Knitting and Crocheting House Cup).  When we searched for kids' groups, we came across Harry Potter Kids and Teens, which so perfectly fit her needs and desires that I thought her eyes would get stuck in permanently wide surprise.  Now she is reminding me that we need to move her projects to her notebook as soon as possible.

Both Ravelry and Tinkatolli are gentle introductions to social networking.  They have well-communicated boundaries and folkways that make them safe and unthreatening.  Members are fiercely protective of the hospitality of their community, vigilant at informal enforcement of rules against harassment and spamming, and vigorously work to isolate and remove those who don't adhere to its norms (through shunning, banning, and public shaming).  Such incidents are rare and are quickly shunted out of casual view by a vast army of volunteer moderators.  I have next to no concerns that she will encounter anything untoward from her fellow gamer-makers or fellow knitters, and I'm confident that she will tell me about anything confusing or concerning that might happen to her online.

Nevertheless, she has crossed a border that didn't exist when I was growing up.  I was a teenager when I started to get involved in BBSes -- the kind you dial up on your modem and log into individually -- and nobody knew anything about online safety.  I'm probably lucky I didn't get myself into trouble.  I'm sure there are seven-year-olds out there with Facebook pages; no reason to cross that bridge anytime soon in this house.  You all know that I'm an techno-optimist; treated with the proper respect and constructive attitude, the internet is no more dangerous to kids than a sidewalk or playground, and should be monitored but promoted in the same way: it's good to get outside, meet new friends, and be a part of the civic life of your community, as long as you know a few simple rules that allow you to do it safely.  I'm grateful that places like Tinkatoll and Ravelry exist; the playgrounds of the internet, if you will -- places largely free of commercial pressure, places with constructive purposes that promote healthy behaviors and self-images, places where kids can connect with others who share their interests, be inspired, invite and reciprocate friendships.  If there are bumps along the way, they are likely to be small, and they will be learning experiences for the bigger social challenges coming down the pike, both on- and offline.

(By the way: If you are a Raveler and friend of mine -- IRL or in cyberspace -- and would like to friend Cady Gray, please leave me a comment or shoot me a message through any convenient channel, and I'll give you her username.  The more of my wonderful friends who are part of her online life, the better.  Each new friend will give her immeasurable happiness, so please don't hesitate to make her day.)

Work in progress

One of the reasons I wanted to build myself a new crafting area is to make it easier for me to undertake sewing projects.  Right now if I want to sew, I do it on the dining room table, and it better be something I can complete in a few hours.  I'd like to leave my sewing machine set up on my new desk and have everything already at hand when I have time to work.

Denizens of Ravelry frequently ask whether there are similar sites for their other hobbies -- needlepoint, cross-stitch, rug-hooking, tatting, etc.  The answer is no, at least with the features that make Ravelry so powerful and unique.  But at least one group has attempted to apply a self-consciously Ravelry-esque model to sewing, and the result is mysewingcircle.com.

Ravelers will find the site familiar, from the "notebook" where they can link their projects to patterns and fabrics, to the lower-case sans-serif typeface used throughout.

Right now it's small, but growing.  Evidence that things are going right is easy to come by.  I entered my projects yesterday, and for one of them, the pattern (an internet freebie) wasn't yet in the database.  As I would on Ravelry, I created the pattern entry myself, entering all the information, then linking it to my project.

When I went back to the site today and took a look at my notebook, I saw that the pattern now had an official picture in the database.  Somebody scanning the newly entered patterns had gone to the site where it appears and found a picture they could attach to the database record for the pattern.

What that says to me is that the site is already populated by people who care about making it useful.  They tend the garden, water and weed what's planted by the whole user population, keep everything tidy, and jump in to contribute where they see a need.

That's what's made Ravelry so successful -- a combination of site design that makes user contributions easy and rewarding, and a community that quickly evolved folkways of service.  Seeing those same attributes at mysewingcircle.com gives me confidence that the site has what it takes to become the elusive "Ravelry for sewing" that so many are looking for.  And just as Ravelry has made me a better, more prolific, and more adventurous knitter -- by leaps and bounds -- I'm hoping mysewingcircle.com will improve my skills and inspire my efforts.

Outcomes

As we prepare our syllabi and plan our curricula, ideally we are thinking about objectives.  We list what knowledge and skills we want our students to acquire during our classes, and craft activities and assignments linked to those objectives.

What's interesting about our job as teachers is that there's a constant tension between those course objectives and larger goals -- the goals of degree programs, of graduate schools, of the professions for which we're preparing them, of families, communities, nations, the human race.  There is supposed to be some alignment among those sets of goals; they should express similar values or point toward a shared vision of the good.  We know, however, that we have little or no control over those bigger spheres.  So sometimes our course objectives are parochial -- even, perhaps, trivial.

It's when we think about what our objectives might be if their success was measured not at the end of the course, but weeks, months, or years after the final exam, that we might see the connections.  Many of us have had the experience of students telling us what our course meant to them years later.  Even more striking is when we see the learning and the transformation with our own eyes, not in an e-mail or a card or a phone call, but in the actions of our students.

I had the members of my Craft Wisely class join Ravelry at the beginning of our time together.  Now that the course is over, I'm realizing that I'm going to be able to witness some of the effects of the course as their activity on the site pops up on my feed.  Over the break, as I checked my "friends activity" (a Ravelry feature that accumulates the projects and photos posted, favorited, planned, and discussed by your friends on the site), I saw the holiday gifts my students made for their families and friends.  I saw their aspirations soar, through the patterns and projects they marked as their favorites -- signaling the items and techniques they find inspiring, or would like to try someday.  And I saw their future plans in the patterns they placed in their queue and the yarns they added to their stash.

It's not all the students in the class who continue to be active knitters and crocheters, of course.  But how cool is it that I can see how the course affected -- and continues to affect -- some of those who participated, by observing their ongoing involvement in the activities around which the course revolved? Not only is it gratifying to see them continue to participate in handcrafting, it also refocuses my gaze beyond the intramural concerns of the course and toward the broader ways I want my students' lives to be changed.

Two million hands at work

Unless you are a knitter or crocheter -- or a web developer -- you probably don't know exactly what Ravelry is.  Yet the site signed up its one millionth member in the wee morning hours of Saturday, November 13.

I've been on Ravelry since August 2007.  I still run into fellow knitters who've never heard of it, let alone the general public.  And I still find it difficult to explain in a sentence of two why they should be a part of it.  It's not just a social network.  It's not just a database of materials and patterns.  It's a socially-generated database that turns out to be the greatest collaboratively-updated repository of information about a specialized skillset ever produced.

When I wrote about Ravelry in my presentation to the Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Theology and Energy last February, there were a quarter of a million members.  When I updated the essay for publication this summer, there were 600,000 members.  The join rate keeps accelerating.  Of course the number of regular users is much smaller and grows more slowly; yet the daily high point of simultaneous users also keeps climbing.  Not only are there more members, but there are also more people logging onto the site regularly.

On January 12, 2008, I sent my first message to a new Raveler as part of the newly-formed Ravelry Welcome Wagon.  Almost three years later, I've sent more than 31,000 messages to people within a day or two after they join the site.  My Welcome Wagon beat is the G's, which means that I welcome everyone who chooses a username that starts with G.  That's 31,000 grandmothers, girls, grrls, glows, and geeks.

It's no exaggeration to say that Ravelry has changed my life.  It's brought me hundreds of new friends in the last four years.  It's pushed me to acquire new skills and try techniques that I would have thought utterly beyond me.  In fact, it's turned me from a person who has managed to learn the basics of knitting, into a knitter.  The living, palpable, visible example of thousands of people just like me who transformed string into art and comfort and warmth and adornment -- that's what it took to make me into a maker. 

Now I create my life rather than consuming it.  Ravelry made it possible.  One million members is quite a milestone.  But a far more impressive feat, from where I sit, is how Ravelry bridged the distance between me when I picked up the needles, and me now.

The other family

Tonight's post with all the details of Ravelympic gold is at Toxophily. And here's a preview with the very happy beneficiary:

17 days of glory

I just got off the phone with Marly's Yarn Thing podcast. With my fellow Ravelympic moderators Chris and Jenny, I talked all things Ravelympics for about an hour.

It was a laughter-filled, chaotic conversation marked by much information and many anecdotes. We were even joined by Jess and Casey, Ravelry's founders.

At the end, some of us talked about what makes the Ravelympics special: its spirit of teamwork, its lighthearted competition. My answer would be a bit more about me (so I kept quiet). For the Ravelympics I am part of a small team managing an organization with more than 10,000 members. That's roughly the same membership as the American Academy of Religion, on whose board of directors I sit as part of a much, much larger management team.

Yet if one were to measure the involvement of the membership in the organization -- their productivity as empowered by the organization -- their identification with the organization -- the Ravelympics would knock the AAR out of the park. Yes, it's short-term. But it's also stunning. Very few of those affiliated with the Ravelympics will fail to participate actively. Most will produce multiple works in their affiliated disciplines. Hundreds have taken on leadership roles in ad hoc suborganizations.

If my real-world academy could approach half this level of engagement, we'd be the envy of every scholarly organization in the world. It's something to ponder as the AAR moves into its second century: how to be a resource to its members, spark their creativity, and earn their loyalty.

Pageantry

I've been looking forward to this day for months. It's the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. That would be enough for this Olympic junkie, but it's also the mass cast-on for the 2010 Ravelympics, the Olympic-themed yarn event held in the sovereign nation of Ravelry.

There are nearly 9000 members of the Ravelympic group in which I am one of the administrators. Not everyone competing has joined the group, however, so I'm confident in estimating that the true count exceeds 10K.

Thousands -- literally thousands -- of knit, crochet, and woven items will be created in the next sixteen days by competitors around the world representing more than 400 teams. More importantly, thousands -- literally thousands -- of people, all ages and skill levels, will challenge themselves to do something they have never done before. Whether it be a 50,000 stitch sweater in two weeks, a dozen toys for charity, or someone's first-ever try at lace or colorwork, the spirit of the Ravelympics is to attempt something grand.

Until the torch in Vancouver is extinguished, I and my fellow volunteers will hand out medals and celebrate the achievements of these "Ravthletes" as we call them. Among them will be people mastering a skill they have long honed, and people claiming an identity as crafters they've never felt entitled to before. I'm honored to be a part of their transformation over this brief, magical period. Their trust and love changes me as much as the event changes them.

So tonight is a night to celebrate. Let the Games begin!

Under neat that

I know I'm late to the Cake Wrecks train. But c'mon ... Cake Wrecks! As funny as I thought the fireman-with-dripping-hose "Good luck in China" cake was before, when I read the story of its creation and unfortunate coloration, I was shaking with silent, helpless laughter -- sadly, all alone while Noel and the kids went to the grocery store.

Remember, all cakes were bought from actual professional purveyors of cakes.

If you are not sick to death of me yammering on about the Ravelympics changing lives, hearts, and minds, then today's real post is over here at Toxophily.