Well, just for a moment, that is. My current Favorite Way to Waste Time - and this is a REALLY efficient engine for that, swallowing whole hours at once - is Ravelry.

It's so utterly cool I can't begin to describe all the cool features. The best aspect, as far as I'm concerned, is that the site uses databases in a completely clever way. So, fr'instance, I can enter in a particular project that I'm working on . . . and the pattern, the book it's from, and the yarn I'm using are potentially all pre-existing elements in the database. So I can click on my yarn, and see all the other Ravelers who have projects using that yarn. Or I can see all the projects that use or used the same pattern. And then when I get to someone else's project, I can see all their OTHER projects. Or I can click on their profile and get some idea of who they are, how long they've been knitting, and what else interests them.

People can join groups. All groups have discussion forums, too. You can find everything from "Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks" to groups for bondage & s&m - thankfully, I've heard of that last one but not found it myself . . . basically, the whole human rabble is represented, I think, and all connected by yarn. I can click on anyone's avatar (they appear next to the posts) and read everything they've written in all the forums, or I can see their projects, or I can send them a private message. The thought that has gone into this place is amazing. (There are over 17,000 users so far. And there's ONE programmer. One. Site design should just not be done by committee, is what I am starting to think. This guy is brilliant.)

So, so much more to say about this, and about the group dynamics and the design of the site. One of my favorite examples in recent weeks: A misunderstanding erupted because of the way people interpreted a comma. A person made a statement of the form, "I don't care if it was cats, I don't want to see anything like that." Half the people reading thought that the person meant that cats were an example of what she didn't want to see. Half the people (the ones who were failed by public school and who think that comma splices are full stops) thought she meant that seeing cats would've been OK. Stuff like this just gets my discourse-analyst pulse racing . . .

At any rate. I'm spending far too much time tracking the musings of 17,000 strangers and taking pix of my yarn . . . Emil just gave me a whole bunch more for my birthday, too, so I have to get cracking on that. (Photographing it. Oh, yeah, I guess I should think about knitting with it, too . . . )