New-Wave Knitting

Abstract

As the crafting trend continues apace, knitting remains very popular as the seemingly endless number of titles published on the subject, in print and online, can attest. How do we know which books and resources will best serve our patrons, and where do we turn for guidance and hands-on (as it were) reviews? Kathleen Collins, the coordinator of Reference Services for the Odegaard Undergraduate Library at the University of Washington (UW) and a sociology subject libranan and children's and young adult literature librarian for the UW Libraries, offers thirty-eight resources that can create and support a knitting core collection. Collins taught herself to knit fifteen years ago from library books. Her guides were Maggie Righetti's Knitting in Plain English, Barbara Walker's Learn-to-Knit Afghan Book, and a small pamphlet she's long since lost. She currently has a shelf full of knitting books, three hampers' worth of yarn stash, and six projects in progress on the needles.--Editor Hand-knitting has a long social history; the earliest known knitted garments are cotton sock fragments found in Egypt and dated to about two thousand years ago. With the invention of the knitting machine and the industrialization of cloth and garment manufacture, knitting at home became less of a necessity and more of a craft, and as such it has gone in and out of vogue many times in the two centuries since the Industrial Revolution. During the last decade it has enjoyed a particularly vigorous revival, and women (and some men) both young and old can frequently be seen knitting in public--on buses and in coffee shops, in book groups and at ALA conferences. Periodic surveys conducted by the Craft Yarn Council of America (www.craftyarncouncil.com) indicate that in the last ten years the number of new knitters has grown by large numbers. An increasing number of those new to knitting, while continuing to rely on printed materials and drawing inspiration from the knitting giants of previous generations (Elizabeth Zimmermann, Barbara Walker, Kaffe Fassett), also turn to the Internet for knitting inspiration. Online magazines, knitting blogs, and social networking groups have become the cradle for a new generation of knitting designers. This column is, first and foremost, an attempt to reflect the wide and wired world of contemporary knitting and to recommend to public libraries a selection of knitting resources that highlight the major knitting authors, techniques, and trends from the past decade. As such, the emphasis of the core collection presented here is on breadth rather than depth--major trends like felting are represented by a single book--and on profiles rather than patterns. After all, the new-wave knitter well knows that he or she can supplement the printed project books available in the library additional resources from the web. WEBSITES Knitty.com Amy Singer founded this influential web-only magazine with a sense of humor and absolutely no doily in 2002. Each quarterly issue contains projects by up-and-coming designers (difficulty ratings range playfully from mellow, to tangy, to piquant, to extra spicy), feature articles, and a Cool Stuff column that reviews books, yarns, tools, and accessories. Ravelry.com The Facebook of the fiber crowd launched in 2007 and now has 1 million members. Ravelry provides a place for knitters to keep track of their yarn stashes, needles, projects, and patterns. In the patterns section users can see how a particular design looks when made by real knitters using different yarns. Members can follow favorite designers and interact other knitters on forums like RaveLibrarians and Sheepless in Seattle. The site requires a log-in, but membership is free. Knitter's Review (http://knittersreview.com) Clara Parkes, the author of The Knitter's Book of Yarn, writes this high-quality site of frank and in-depth yarn, book, and tool reviews, how-to tips, and active user forums. …