I'm waiting in line....

OK, so in one of my posts, I mentioned that I like to visit yarn, knitting, crocheting sites.

So today, I was reading a post by someone who mentioned that she actually received her "invitation" to join Ravelry. She described the wait, and her anticipation about what she would find as a member.

It got me to thinking. Why in the world would someone sign up to join a website hosted by crafty people and have to wait to be invited? I mean....there are so many other websites out there where you can wax eloquently about fibers and prices and techniques with needles, yarn, etc...

If I DID go to that site, would I be lured in, like a lamb to the slaughter? Would they offer me Kool Aid in a Dixie cup?

I mean it's well known that people wait in line for days to audition for American Idol--but that's because there's possible fame and millions at the end of that rainbow.

And when my daughter was little, I DID wait in line for 5 1/2 hours for that Cabbage Patch doll for her....the one with the red braids and freckles and that cute little white sweater she came with....her name was Ardelia and she smelled wonderfully like baby powder. But back to the present day:

Why oh why would someone like myself, who has free rein of thousands of knitting, crocheting, yarn, pattern-sharing, tip-giving, friend-making sites, give a hoot about some site that you have to sign up for, wait in line, then join only after receiving an invitation in your email box? Why?

What could possibly be there at Ravelry that I couldn't access on other sites? Why should I even take the time to Google them? Why should I take a quick peek at their site? Why should I even take a nano second glance at the way that they catalog yarns, links to patterns and their newsletter, share photos, blogs and maps and directions to local yarn stores....or as knitters refer to them, LYS?

Why would I read about how after you sign up, you can expect quite a wait in line before you become a part of the group?

So, just because I DID sign up today....and I went to their counter where you can find out how many people are ahead of you in line....and I found that more than six thousand people have signed up ahead of me.....So what? Does that make me a knitwit? Does that mean that my thoughts are tangled? Does that mean that I enjoy needling others? Does that mean that I have my skeins of yarn all lined up on my shelves in the computer room.... in a color-coordinated fashion?

No! I think it means that I am a patient person. After all, since they only send out their invitations to 800 to 1,000 people per day, I will patiently sit here and wait it out. According to my calculations, that should be approximately 7 days, 10 1/2 hours and 4 minutes.