A couple of tech bros have decided, with no knitting experience or knowledge and a quick trip to Michaels, that they would like to take over the knitting world and revolutionize it for all us grandmas who don’t know the locator in our url.
No, thank you.
And that’s the polite answer.
There are thousands of small knitting businesses who know their craft. Who make tools for the craft and its relations (spinning, crocheting, dyeing, weaving, etc.). This “grandma hobby” has been going on for centuries and all that knowledge is already around and available.
But instead of lifting up existing businesses, these misogynistic, condescending, and based on their comments about using Chinese models in tutorials, racist men have decided that with zero knowledge, they are going to create tools that knitters need. Then they are going to make them cheap in China and sell them to knitters using knitting dot com.
Knitting has been a hot bed of issues in the past decade, from addressing the rapid rise of white men in a mostly female dominated hobby (reverse glass ceiling effect) and the rising voices of Black knitters all the way to Ravelry’s lack of accessibility to people with visual disturbances from their website and their banning of pro-Trump propaganda.
Patty J. Lyons has had a friendly war with Seth Meyers.
Clara Parkes has educated us on centuries of wool.
Jen Hewitt discusses racism and the connections that make us with her designs and new book.
Stephanie Pearl McPhee is about the echelon of knitting stardom.
And then there are the hundreds of small dyers, podcasters, and other tool makers who work hard on the tools we want, the swag we can’t live without (hello GG!)