UNIT 3 Primary Research

Primary research document

    Traditionally knitting has been seen as the domain of women. When people first think of knitting, people thinks of women. The image of a group of old ladies clicking needles inside their house easily pump out when people thinks of knitting, this activity is definitely gendered in the popular psyche. In 21 century, knitting group is not longer just for old ladies; it is a kind of gathering for knitters and knit lovers to share their knitting tips and ideas. These kind of kitting groups usually launch in the independent yarn shops. There are several independent yarn shops in London. I went to Loop [The details are given in appendix 1], I knit [The details are given in appendix 2], All the Fun of the Fair [The details are given in appendix 3]and Prick your Finger[The details are given in appendix 4] to investigate more about knitting business. The owners of these shops are mostly knit lovers. Mercifully I had opportunity to talk with Rachael Matthews (image 1), the owner of Prick You Finger. Rachael told me, running a knitting business is not easy. To be honest, they couldn’t make a lot profit. One of the most difficult things is to find the UK based yarn, only small farms produce yarns, they took a long time to find the provider of yarn. Although they faced lots of difficulties when running a yarn shop, they are happy to own this cozy shop. Especially the shop provides a place for knit lovers to gather around and share with each other.

    In addition, I visited the department store’s yarn shop in John Lewis (image 4 to image 6) and Liberty. Both of them are a part of the department store. They both sell attractive yarns and knitting tools. Compare with the independent yarns shops, the atmosphere of them are less cozy and more commercial. Nevertheless it is no doubt that they are convenience for people to buy yarns while shopping. Under my observation, the target group of the independent yarns shops and the department store’s are different. The former one target on knit lovers while the latest one target on the public.

    Apart from visiting yarn and knitting shops, I went to the Textile Design Department in Chelsea College of Arts in order to know more about the process of knitting work. I did a short interview with Hyun Kyung OH(image 2) [The details are given in appendix 6], who is a year 1 student study Textile Design and she is specialized in knit. Throughout the interview with Hyun Kyung, it breaks my traditional thought of knitting. When Hyun Kyung shares her recent design project with me, she told me knitting is quite flexible media in design. Knitting could be much more than I thought.

    More than that, I also talked with Timothy Andrews (image 3), technician in the knit studio of Textile Design in Chelsea College of Arts(image 7 and image 8). He showed me the 2 types of knitting machines in the studio---Dubied hand driven flat knitting machine with single bed (image9) and the other one is with double bed(image 10). It is quite surprise that in this computer-orientated era; hand driven flat knitting machine is still common in mini factories in UK and fashion filed. Timothy said although computer seems bringing us a lot of convenience in life, it still takes a lot of time to design a programme in knitting. After created the programme, it still needs time to produce the final product. Normally it takes 5-6months to create a computer programme for one knit patterns while using the hand driven flat knitting machines, it just take few days to finish a final piece. Hence hand driven flat knitting machine is still popular in textile field.

     After all I gave out questionnaires to student who is studying in Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Arts. The questionnaire [The details are given in appendix7] is focus on knitting; the aims of launching this questionnaire is to know more about my age group’s notion of knitting. There are 25 participants, 18 females and 6 males, they are studying different subject in Art and Design field. [The details are given in appendix8]

     According to the result of the questionnaire, there are only 4 knitters. Moreover there are still 56 percent of the participants have tried knitting. Most of them response that they don’t continue to knit is because they have no time. To those who have never tried knitting, some of them claimed they are interested but not learned, while some of them have no interest on knitting, and those who have no interest are mostly male. No matter the participants have tired knitting or not, around 70 percent of them replied ‘a Knitting Set complete with yarn, needles and patterns’ would perk their interest to try knitting. Although the survey did show the revival of knitting hit my age group appreciably, it shows my age group does not have a strong resistance toward knitting.