Homework for Academic Writing

Vg Anett
Oct. 14.2013

Proposal
Over the past twenty years, the Internet fundamentally changed every
aspect of our lives, from high science to the world of crafts. It made possible
for people around the world who are interested in the same thing, doing the
same craft, being part of the same fandom all around the world to
communicate, and therefore, to develop a whole subcultures with its their
own sub-groups, myths, and celebrities.
In my thesis, I will start with a brief history of knitting, from its
uncertain beginnings in ancient Egypt through the middle ages, the industrial
revolution and wars. I will follow with a short look focusing on what role
crafts, and in particular, knitting played in on constructing and building
communities. However, the main part of my thesis will focus on the
perception of the craft and its practitioners in the last two decades of the 20 th
century, as well as its radical change and shift of evaluation in the new
millennia.
Being a knitter myself, I have first-hand experience in, and keep being
amazed by, how the Internet changed this craft. How it became so easy, only
taking a few clicks, to acquire new skills, tools and materials. How easy it is
to read about adventures of others, in mailing lists in blogs. How Ravelry.com
with its two million, and still growing number of members around the world
became the internet phenomenon. How easy it is to get in contact with a
designer, a writer or a fellow knitter.
I plan to explore how a world-wide community formed around the craft,
how this community developed into a subculture, and how this subculture
raised its own celebrities, and fandoms. I will analyze its similarities and

differences with other subcultures, through examples of well-known bloggers

and podcasters who grew into celebrities.

Introduction
Two or three decades ago, if I wanted to learn a skill, I should have had
to find someone, maybe even far away, who had the skill , and travel there to
learn it. If I wanted to use a material that was not available locally, I might
have had to get a passport, travelled where it was sold, and buy bought it
there. If I wanted to talk to people who were interested in the same thing as I
was, lets say, a particular craft, I might have had to find a group in the place
where I lived. And what iIf I happened to be stationed in an area, where
nobody cared about that thing? Bad luck. I could have given up, or keptep
doing it alone. Now, I can do all that from my living room. What changed? The
Internet became widely available and a significant part of our everyday life.
However, it is not only the availability of tools, materials and
information, that which the Internet has changed in the last few decades.
Through its various venues, it made it possible for people to connect and ,
develop friendships, groups, which over time grew into a whole subculture.
As knitting is already an active venture, being a part of a subculture is similar
to other subcultures in many respect, but however, it is also different
somehow. In my essay, I am going to look into look into knitting as a
subculture:. Wwhy knitters love their craft, why they let it take over their life.
W; why would knitters spend so much money on yarn and dedicate so much
time to knit a sweater, when the stores are full of readymadeready-to-wear
ones. W; why it is that more than any craft community knitters love, show off
their achievement, and to talk about their craft. This need to show off and
talk led to mailing lists, blogs and later Ravelry, and through these venues,
knitting grew into a subculture itself. AndIn addition, from all this, celebrities
sprung up. Some of them developed a following ?mit: group, community?
because of their talent in designing;, others are widely listened becauseas
they produced professional sounding podcasts;, and finally, others became
well-known, because they write about knitting with a witty sense of humor,

that makes knitters look into themselves and be able to laugh at their own
faults.
Naturally, other crafts also have their own community online. The
Internet made possible for people with all kinds of interest to find each other
and exchange ideas. However, looking at sites where they discuss beading,
woodworking, or even vegetarian cooking for that matter, what I observed is
that the connection between knitters is stronger than any of those others.
And this connection, this need to feel to be a part of the community, and the
forces behind it, like Ravelry.com, made possible for something that started
out as a trend to become much more and outlive all expectations.

In my thesis, among other materials, I am going to use three books to

base my discourse.
The first one will be The Close-Knit Circle by Kerry Willis, with the
subtitle American Knitters Today. The book is part of the series on American
Subcultures, and as such, it takes a looklooks at knitters as a subculture
itself. Starting with its history, the ups and downs of knitting, finally it focuses
on how this new revival of knitting came about. Why is that in our rushing
world, where everything is about consumerism, fast-food, fast-sex, and fasteverything, modern day knitters spend money and time, sometimes many
dozens of hours, to create something. In the last few chapters, Willis
introduces some of the well-known knitters, who are well known, so much
they can be called celebrities. At the end, the author predicts a decline in
knittings popularity. However, the book was written in 2007, just before the
birth of Ravelry.com, the haven of knitters, which gave just an other
momentum to the craft to move forward with an even bigger speed.
The second material, I am going to take a looklook at, is Henry Jenkinss
Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture. Knitting is an active
pastime itself. Taking part in a community, by participatingjoining in a mailing
list, by writing a blog, or just posting pictures of to show their finished items
on Ravelry is already a kind of participation. Jenkins explores participatory
culture, why it is important for our children to have media literacy. He also
shows us the venues and ways one can actively take part and create. I am
going to use this book to compare knitters with other media participants, in
how and why they are the same, and how and why they are different.
Finally, I will examine is Matt Hillss book titled Fan Cultures. In my
opinion a big part of subcultures are their celebrities. This is no different in
knitting. Well-known designers, bloggers, and the founders of Ravelry are
celebrities in their own right. In his book, Hills investigates different aspects

of fan cultures. He writes about fans ambivalent relation to consumerisms,

their icons, their mysteries. How fans use their body or even geography to
express their love for one particular show. I will explore and compare the
same ambivalent feelings of knitters about their stance against consumerism,
while they acquire stash at an alarming rate. I will reflect that how from
relative obscurity, some knitting celebrities to managed to achieve to get an
almost religious followersing, and how these fans express their love for the
subject of their love.

What is knitting? A series of loops on a stick, through which another

series of loops are can be pulled through with the help of another stick,
thusas a result making a kind of flexible fabric. How and when knitting
started? No one exactly knows, its origins shrouded in myistery, but most
researchers agree that it is older than written history.1 There are two major
reasons why do we know so little about the beginnings. First,
This dearth of information results in part from the tendency of
traditional historian to concentrate on documenting the acts of people
in power. No one ever knitted his way to the throne, knitted a lethal
weapon, or knitted a constitution2
The other reason is that knitted fabrics were made from natural materials,
like linen, cotton and wool, and they tend to disintegrate over time.
ButNevertheless, historians estimate that by 500 AD thise technique was an
advanced and accomplished art. Most textile historians agree that it probably
originates from Egypt.
However, wherever it comes from, we know that knitting was
widespread in Europe and England during the Middle Ages because the
Catholic Church inventoried liturgical gloves3. In our days, we tend to think
about knitting as someones hobby, but in fact for hundreds of years people
knitted because they had to, either to provide clothing for their family, or to
get some kind of income.4 Throughout history, knitting stayed with us,
gaining and loosing popularity in waves, but what is that, even when other
crafts fell out of favor, it was capable of making a comeback, gaining never
1 http://www2.ca.uky.edu/hes/fcs/FACTSHTS/CT-MMB-730.pdf, accessed 17
November 2013.
2 Willis, Kerry. The Close Knit Circle. Connecticut: Praeger, 2007, page 5.
3 Willis, page 8.

4 Willis, page 9.

seen popularity, so much that it managed to develop its own subculture? As

Kerry Willis says in her book The Closed Knit Circle:
Knitting is more popular than ever: The Craft Yarn Council of America
(CYCA), the yarn industrys trade association estimated in a 2004
consumer survey that one in every three American women, that is 53
million women, know how to knit or crochet. The results were so
surprising to the association, that they broke their biennial survey
tradition and commissioned a narrower survey in 2005, focusing more
on consumer trends.

Furthermore, other statistics show, that there are more knitters than golfers
in the US6, and the ever- growing number of rRavelry.com shows, that it is not
a craze that is going away anytime soon.
There are, of course, practical reasons. Knitting is relaxing (most of the
time), while keeps the brain fresh, it helps to learn decode, make sense of a
pattern, understanding math, yet it is creative and productive. But Moreover,
not all this would not be enough. Knitting was all the above and then some,
back in the early nineties as well, yet the craft was way into its decline. What
changed, so much that turning the tide in the late nineties the popularity of
knitting did not only turn upward, but almost exploded? The Internet. It
would be difficult to overstate the influence the internet had on knitting. A
Google search on the word knitting in August 2006, generated about 38.4
million hits7
With the arrival of the Internet, a whole new generation - teenagers, and
young people in their twenties and thirties- that is by default interested in
new technology found itself faced with an ancient craft. Information,
5 Willis, page 29.
6 Pearl-McPhee. Stephanie, The Free Range Knitter: The yarn Harlot Writes Again.
Kansas, Sidney, LondonAndrews McMeel Publishing, 2008. page 122.
7 Willis, page 85.

techniques, tools and material became widely and readily available, just a
click away. It started with mailing lists, where information flowed freely, and
people started connecting to each other, then continued with blogs, and later
podcasts where individual knitters talked about their pursuits, and showed
the results. With these, new techniques started to spread:, knitting in the
round, from the top down, sweaters without the need of sewing seams, or
gives the possibility of trying them on while they were worked on. Materials
like soft non -scratchy wools, cashmere, hand-dyed, even handspun yarns
could be had through Etsy, or Ebay, and patterns could be downloaded from
various web-sites. Knitty.com (the first online magazine, offering free
patterns) became popular, and in late 2007, Ravelry.com was founded, and
became the center of the knitting/spinning world almost overnight.
All this allowed to knitters to do more than just sit home and knit. They
could step out of the stereotype;, destroy the image of the old lady sitting in
a rocking chair, clicking away needles. Young people, who by nature
fascinated with anything new, dived in, and used the Internet to its full
advantages. They participated in mailing lists, wrote their blog, and becaome
members of rRavelry.com, postinged away not only on its personal pages, but
also in its forums. As Henry Jenkins cites in his book Confronting the
Challenges of Participatory Culture, according to a 2005 study conducted by
the Pew Internet & Life project more than half of all American teens []
could be considered media creators8, thus embracing the new participatory
culture9.
In places like rRavelry.com, or Facebook groups not every member
must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute, and what
they contribute will be appropriately valued. In such a world many will only
dabble, some will dig deeper, and still others will master the skills that are
8 Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture 2003.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 2009. page 4.
9 Jenkins, page 4.

most valued within the community10. This is absolutely not different for
knitters. Some will knit nothing else but dishcloths, others venture into the
world of hats, and socks, some other try making sweaters, and yet others will
perfect the most complicated Fair Isle (colorful stranded patterns) or lace
project. Others will even design and write up patterns, and there will be
those, who write the most popular blogs and books about knitting.

Bibliography

Willis, Kerry. The Close Knit Circle. Connecticut: Praeger, 2007.

Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture 2003.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 2009.
Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London,: Routledge, 2002.
Pearl-McPhee. Stephanie., The Free Range Knitter: The yYarn Harlot Writes
Again. Kansas, Sidney, London, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008.

10 Jenkins, page 6.