Mary-Helen quite rightly takes Stella Minahan to task for her shoddy and – in my humble opinion – offensive research. Minahan is the person mentioned in all the Australian papers this week as the “researcher” looking into knitting, the Internet, and “stitchnbitch” communities. What I didn’t realize was that Minahan has specifically restricted her survey to women under 40. Huh? My first SnB experience was the Newtown SSK group, who – while definitely not all over 40 – were pretty much all a fair number of years older than I was. Even at our Tapestry Craft SnB we get a good mix of older and younger ladies. How silly of Minahan to exclude them from her work when they would definitely add a different perspective!
Miss Helen
July 5, 2005 — 6:25 pm
I guess it wouldn’t fit into her hypothesis that older folk have been stitching and bitching (without the recent franchise associated with it). The article pissed me off also, as a younger knitter. I hate it when people behave as though knitting has to be reinvented to be applied to younger peoples lives.
Kris
July 5, 2005 — 10:52 pm
Exactly. She probably thinks we’re all knitting ponchos and Feathers scarves too. Hello?! I know young people who spin, young people who felt, young people who steek and cable and knit socks and gloves and cardies and all kinds of “old people” items. (Okay, so really between you and me we got all those covered, but still…) 🙂