i have found one swedish knitting blog that gives the most heartfelt anthem for the support of knitalongs, as well as polite dismissal of my scorn for them, as any i could hope for. using the best translator i could, i am very satisfied to see that my opinions were "interesting" but that the blogger in question is still "adoring parallellstickning" and is going to continue doing it "as never formerly". that's the kind of resolve i was brought up with. spend your energies doing what you want and expressing what you want, not trying to bend the contrary people's arms backwards trying to get them to agree with you. go swedish knitters!
in english, and in my inbox, i got so many excited and emphatic rants. politics! ergonomics! innoculation against i-pod-and-cell-phone-cozy malaise! eleanor roosevelt! technique-mongering! all mentioned in often barely coherent e-mails about knitting revolution and knitting counterrevolution. everybody (everybody i heard from) has their own ideas, but shares a common fire in the belly.
here's an interesting point from teresa: to remember, at the heart of revolution is CONNECTION. (she even wrote it in all caps like that). "connection" cannot be easily qualified. fruitful connections happen. synchronistic, spooky connections happen. and surrounding these are millions of connections that are merely white noise -- possibly even to the parties that are sharing them.
my friend john, with his non-knitter and rather floundering (but effortful!) pronouncements on the signs of the knitting revolution and counterrevolution, appears to have sensed this very significant point. remember: in john's version of the revolution, the delivery system for that revolution was an episode of Gilmore Girls. in his counterrevolution, there was "a video with marilyn manson knitting a big satanic sock". in both cases -- mass media is involved. perhaps that video of marilyn manson was an MPEG file, being downloaded around the planet.
i hadn't thought of it that way, but it was right there. proving that, like howlin' wolf said, the men don't know but the little girls understand. (truly, his outer appearance aside, my friend john is a pink-cheeked, crinolined little girl.)
i am keeping my eyes open as this sea change occurs. i'm always excited when a prediction, or something i've considered to be true for some time, becomes something other than just my weird opinion and is considered to have basis in fact. it's happened before.