Online knitting communities

Traditionally, new knitters would sit down with friends and family to learn techniques and improve their skills, but many seem to lack opportunities for these face-to-face experiences and instead have created knitting communities in the online world. If you're reading this blog, you are probably well aware of the vast number of knitting blogs out there. Knitters are a major part of the blogosphere. There seems to be no end to the number of knitters who want to share their work with a wider audience than the local yarn store or are trying to reach out because they have no local community of knitters.

Although you might consider knitting blogs themselves to have a fairly limited audience, many of the knitting blogs have a more specific target audience. For example, there's a blog for Nordic knitters, born-again Christian knitters, and punk rock knitters. The rules for participating in each of these blogs are clearly established so you must live in a Nordic country, love Jesus as your Lord, or love rock music in order to be a member of each of these blogs respectively. You can also subscribe to knitting podcasts, like Secret Knitting in which you knit according to the instructions without seeing in advance what you will be creating. You can then share your pictures with the blog author and other secret knitters.

I've encouraged my students to explore these online options to find people who might share their particular interests in knitting. As for me, I haven't been able to find anyone else who has enjoyed forcing college students to knit for six hours each day.