How to Connect with Knitters Online

I've been reading knitting blogs for over a year and always thought it must be nice to connect with other knitters. The online knitting community is extremely friendly - caring and sharing. The knitters constantly give praise to each other for their finished pieces, readily give knitting advice and share designed patterns. I wanted to be a part of it and I have for the last few months fumbled my way through various tools and methods to connect with a community of knitters.

My blog: KnittingNutter receives about 10-20 comments per article I post and, more importantly, I'm gaining great connections with knitters from around the world.

Here I provide some of my favourite tools and advice for those of you that want to connect with knitters online.

First, you need your own blog. There's lots of blogging software out there, some of it free and some you pay a small fee for. I chose Movable Type, which I have paid a web hosting company to install and host for me. But there's really simple, free blogging software, such as blogger.com. And it's easy. It literally takes seconds to set up a new blogger account and post your first entry.

Build it and they will come - not so much...

When I started blogging a few months ago my expectation was that I would get lots of comments from the get-go. That didn't happen and I was a little disappointed. Why didn't anyone praise me on my first pair of knitted socks? Were they that bad? I slowly realized that you have to connect with other knitters to make them aware of your blog.

I did this in two ways - left comments on other blogger sites and on knitting forums. I slowly started to bookmark some of my favourite knitting blogs, visiting them regularly and leaving comments. And slowly some of these knitters started to leave comments on my blog entries. And my community of blogs I liked to visit grew, as did those that left comments.

Then I came across my next problem, how do I keep track of all my favourite blogs? I had started by bookmarking them, but found it a bit laborious going to each site, to find that no entry had been posted in the last day or two. One of the other knitters suggested I use bloglines. In bloglines (which is free) you can bookmark your sites and it clearly displays when new articles have been entered by each individual blogger. Now I follow about 140 knitting blogs and here's my list.

Going where people meet online

To gain new knitting friends online I visited some online forums geared towards knitters. The best and largest one I've come across is the coffeehouse at knitty.com. I posted a new entry on how to get people to read your blog and within 24 hours I had received seven responses from other knitters, saying they'd been to visit my blog.

Knitters' netrings are lists compiled by a knitter to help bring knitters together. Some of these are purely lists published online of knitters blogs and others are special blog sites created for the members to post to as a community. The netrings focus on something that brings that community together, such as the Northwest Pacific Knitters or, the group I joined this Spring, Knitters that Love Hockey.

And on the subject of creating communities, I've also come across Knit Alongs (KAL). These are communities of knitters that knit the same kind of project. I've seen a lot of sock knit-alongs, but also ones that focus on knitting blankets, shawls, cardigans.... you name it. For the summer I have joined a shawl knitalong hosted by The Barefoot Cobbler for those of us that have not knitted a lace shawl before. So if you are interested in joining us, leave a comment with The Barefoot Cobbler.

The latest buzz in the knitting community is Ravelry. It's a new online community for knitters to log their yarn stash, patterns, projects, to connect with other knitters and learn about new patterns and knitting methods. It's still in beta and it's slowly being opened up to knitters to try out. People who sign up to be a tester are being asked to be patient as they're backlogged. I signed up about three weeks ago and received my invitation to join the community yesterday.