I just stumbled across the OralCulture page, and it points to a major interest and motivation mine in starting the knitting wiki mentioned on my HomePage. For centuries, knitting was the sole domain of oral culture, family-based sharing, and CommunityLore (if selective, gendered, etc.). Now, it's mostly under the control of commercial yarn manufacturers, pattern and magazine publishers, and a specialist, boutiquey kind of luxury community. Granted, to some degree, there are also free craft-pattern sources that in my opinion do not effectively enact the collaborative freedom or quality of content that (as i understand it) are the subject and healthy glorification of MeatballWiki.

I'd love to see people in the (sizeable) online crafts / knitting blog community start teaching and sharing THAT way, and it's an interesting (if flawed) hypothesis that wikis may be a way to regain or reinvent that kind of knowledge base. --JasonConklin

Given that one aspect of the role of a Communities 'historian' in an OralCulture is "story teling" and that wikis are naturally useful in crafting a written version of a communities "lore", how about building on strength and encouraging the "lore" craft? -- HansWobbe

Could you tell us more about face-to-face knitting circles and how people in those situations interact to trade knowledge and socialize? -- SunirShah

Except in a few isolated incidents, I can't say I've been very much exposed to the kinds of social knitting circles you're talking about -- what I think of as the Stitch 'n' Bitch fad, although that book isn't the whole story. Most of my experience knitting/crocheting/sewing with other people has been at home, either been with my mom and sister growing up or, more recently, with my girlfriend.

Still, I think there are social practices in these limited situations that carry over. For one thing, a lot of teaching and sharing of technique and experience goes on. Certain people are recognized as more skilled or experienced in general or at a specific task. Also, and this is probably the biggest problem with regard to creating an online community, there's a lot of hands-on demonstration, passing around of needles and yarn, pointing out errors and structures with fingers, and explanation simultaneous to performance of specific techniques. I learned this way, and have taught a few people this way, too.

As far as more general socialization, I guess it's a lot like any informal "coffee klatch" interaction. Knitting is seen by many knitters as relaxing, and that seems to fit in with "depressurizing" modes of socialization (if that makes sense), i.e., complaining about work, gossiping, and so on. That's not quite what I'm trying to promote, although knitting culture online has its share of that stuff, too. Of course, there's also a lot of talking about knitting in general: yarns people like, things they want to make, things they've made, techniques they hate, etc. Knitting blogs display this bountifully.

There is also the "luxury community" I mentioned above, and to which I'm exposed a little bit in NYC, where all the yarn stores cater to that market -- people who can spend quite a bit of money to take classes and knit with fine yarns on expensive needles. I think it's a bit of a different mode of instruction/learning, though that's not to say a worse one. I'm not so familiar with socialization in that group, either.

Finally, my familiarities may be changing as Heather-Lee and I find (or teach) more peers to crochet or knit. We may start having people over regularly for this purpose, and doing so would give me a lot more grist to mill. --JasonConklin