Knitting Publishers, Stop Insulting my Grandmother

This is a post that is a little old, from January, but it struck a chord with me. It’s written by the owners of [tag]Rosies Yarn Cellar[/tag], a store in Philadelphia, PA and the blog is [tag]Rosie Blogs[/tag].

What is significant about this rant, and it is a rant, is that a store owner is taking a stand against the mass marketing hooha that has become the world of knitting. Knitting has reemerged as a hot hobby. The big hype now is “It’s not your grandmothers knitting, yarn, book, store”, whatever.

Lisa writes –

There must be 500 new knitting books being published this Spring. And 475 of them have the word “young,” “cool,” “hip,” or “easy” in the title.

I don’t know about you, but Courtney and I are sick of it. We’re sick of people claiming that what they do is “not your grandmother’s knitting,” as if there was something wrong with our grandmother’s knitting.

(Hey, publishers–stop insulting my grandmother. I know that’s not what you’re trying to do, but I’ve had it. Eve Plotnick and Dorothy Myers were women of skill, patience, resourcefulness, and creativity. And if you think I’ll ever think better of anything you’re showing me because you tell me it’s unlike what they did or would do, you’re way wrong.)

And we’re sick of all the books that promise to deliver nothing but easy projects. Guess what? Knitting isn’t difficult. In other parts of the world, 4-year-olds do it. Every person reading this–everyone capable of learning to use a computer to read a blog–is smart enough to do any kind of knitting we want.

Do you hear me, publishers? Stop calling us stupid. Every time you tell us that it’s all so easy, we hear what you’re really saying: “Knitting is so hard. Numbers are so scary. Let us hold your hand.” Remember the uproar over the talking Barbie that said “Math is hard”? Same thing.

So here’s the new policy at Rosie’s: We’re not going to order any more books that have “Easy” in the title. We’ve told our book distributor to take us off the “automatic” program that guarantees that we get every new title that comes down the line. There’s too much out there, and too little of it is good.

Now that is really putting your money where your mouth is. Only ordering classic books with good patterns, proven designers – not just every fly-by-night designer who is hot now but doesn’t have good enough stuff to last longer yesterday leftovers.

And what is just as interesting are all the comments to the post. Many people resent the illusion that our grandmothers were dumb and that we need to be speed knitters with large needles and bulky yarn because we are too busy to devote many hours to intense projects.