And All It Took agrees with me: Ravelry EATS Time...  But in a good way!!

After reading this, I quickly emailed the webhostess and begged to be slipped near the front of the line.  So far, this has been about the only benefit of being able to say: I'm the craft editor for BlogHer.  I got my invite within hours. I've been playing a little every week since.

Ravelry takes the idea of a project organizational website and marries it with social abilities of good web 2.0 applications.  After getting my invitation, I was encouraged to build my own profile, upload the projects I'm working on (well, one pair of socks), the projects I'm hoping to work on (my first sweater), keep track of entire knitting inventory (such as it is).  I can search the site for others working with the same yarns (what are they doing with it?) or working the same pattern (jaywalker socks are so popular).  There are forums and groups for both company and support.

If you are or will be signing up, come find me (I need the friends): I am debroby at Ravelry.

AllStitchedUp admits:

I've been meaning to blog about ravelry for a while now,. I put my name down and waited and I've been in for ages now, but... I just don't have time to use it. There is so much to go into it, yarn, projects, patterns and where do I get the hours and hours I'd need to learn how to use all the 'stuff' it can do? Where? I feel I am missing out on a great resource, I know it could be great and do wonderful things for my organisational ability. But, frankly I don't have the organisational ability needed to take full advantage of it, there's too much, it's too good, and I am too disorganised.

And Holly writes:
For what it is worth, I decided to use Ravelry to document projects from here forward. I have not entered any stash till when I am going to use it and I have not put in anything other than some books in the other categories.  I have been running off spreadsheets for years and they have worked fine. But I really don't want to be that organized!  And I would rather be knitting than entering - after all there is life, and food and sleep.

TerraThree:
So any of you who knit or crochet: go sign up now. You'll probably have to wait a while for the invite to join - the site is run by just two people who have been quite overwhelmed with the response to it (q.v. Ravelry blog), because it is the coolest thing since circular needles, after all - but it is absolutely worth the wait. When you get there, you can find me under the username "magistra", where my project list currently looks like this:

LittleWitKnit's Erin even put up a video tour of the site.

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For those whose craft projects exist outside of knitting, there is CraftMemo.  which is an online record keeping and management system. It is missing the networking element that makes Ravelry so appealling, but it does offer a useful way to organize your crafty goods. And, perhaps for small craft business person, she offeres the ability to import export data from financial applications like Excel or Quickbooks, which may help with bookkeeping tasks. 

Related blog reading:

DIY Life lists the Ten Best Craft Sites. Neither of these organizational sites made the cut, but both came close.

Project Rusty comments on both sites.

RyCrafty will be using both sites, but loves the connections possible on Ravelry.

Knittymuggins can't decide.

Debra Roby blogs her art at A Stitch in Time and her life at Deb's Daily Distractions .