Once knitting developed as a skill and a craft, humanity really latched on. Although in recent years, its popularity has fluctuated based on many different factors, there have always been people who knit. Some of the contextual issues that impact knitting the most are war and the state of the economy. Knitting booms in times of stress as a way to feel that we are being helpful, as a way to soothe & reassure, and as a way to save money.

There are as many different kinds of knitters as there are people who knit, but sometimes it is helpful to try to divide by one trait or another to better understand the most important differences. One simple and fairly clear division seems to be how much importance people put on their knitting as compared to the other aspects of their life. In this way, it’s possible to lump a widely varying group into hobbyists or lifestylers.

The world of knitting is populated with particular people, places, things, and ideas that, while occasionally are pretty intuitive and simple, can also be quite tricky for the uninitiated. A brief introduction with some pictures can help someone new to the culture begin to get their footing, and a few words, ranging from the critically basic (the ones a knitter would tease you for not knowing) all the way to the kind of fun colloquialisms people are always excited to explain.

People who knit are as diverse as they come. It’s hard to loop them all into one set of categories, but as many and varied as they all are from one another, it’s not so difficult to begin to see a set traits and values that can help define the culture of present-day knitting from other hobbies and crafts. This simple diagram elucidates some of those aspects of personality necessary for someone to become a successful knitter.

In order to better understand the culture of today’s knitters, we devised a two-part culture probe to leave behind two of our interviews. This probe consisted of a “camera journal” with a disposable camera and a request that the knitter document their “world,” including where they knit and some of their knitted work; and a “make prompt” with a collection of crafty odds and ends to be inspire an object that answers “why do you knit?”