Notes from the underworld

Yesterday's New York Times has a provocative post on its regular Freakonomics page by author Stephen J. Dubner.  In "A Young Reader Asks: Is There an Elitist Oligarchy in the Underworld of Knitters?" Dubner includes an essay by 18-year-old crocheter Sarah Johnson. I assume that the multitude of knitters and crocheters in the blogosphere will be commenting on this piece for days.

Basically, Johnson makes observations on the pattern difficulty ratings on ravelry and suggests an "underworld of niche markets" where only the highly advanced and highly obsessed dwell. I visit ravelry often, but since I do not use the site for its patterns, I will not comment.  To be totally unfair (Hey, this is my blog!), I will quote some introductory lines from Johnson's essay totally out of context, which I, as a mature knitter, find amusing:

...There are a number of personal knitting and crochet blogs and personal websites, but many are administered by older users to whom the language of computers will always be a foreign tongue. A young person, like myself, can just sort of tell that a site like Crochet Pattern Central was made by someone over 50, and that’s a turn-off...

Btw I <3 ravelry :D.

I leave you with this how-to video from one highly advanced and obsessed practitioner of her craft.  I found it on youtube.