UNIT3 Primary Research

Critical analysis of Primary Research

        In recent year, textiles are moving back into the home with a quirky attitude, which brings together traditional craft and modern ideals. That led a strong revival in knitting field. In 2006, the UK Hand Knitting Association estimated that 475,000 people took up knitting in the UK and USA (Turney,2009) Whilst, in 2008, the Craft Yarn Council of America launched a survey about knitting. It expressed a 20 percent increase in knitting participation of women aged 25-34, from 13 percent in 2002 to 33 percent in 2008.(Irvine,2009) These surveys indicate that knitting is undergoing a revival.

        Although there is a revival in knitting, participants are mostly female. It is a sign of women’s work. That may due to knitting was one of many domestic things that need to be done to maintain the household in pervious time. When women knits, knit works become her intelligence and creative ability. In today’s society, the situation has not change at all. Indeed, such approaches dominate an understanding of knitting both historically and in the contemporary world. When I talked to several independent yarns shop, which organizes knitting class, they said most of the participants are female.

    

       The revival of knitting didn’t hit the male to knit however it led to a revival in knitting group’s popularity. In recent year, the popularity of knitting group has increased rapidly. More and more people are picking up needles and starting to knit. ‘Whether this is as a means of relaxation, socialization or celebrity emulation, or as the expression of fashionable dress, as an art installation or as the demonstration of new approaches to new materials, knitting as a practice has certainly bee revisited.’ (Turney,2009 p.216) The spread of knitting group allow knitter to exchange their knit idea with each other. Knitters started to create a different world of knitting. ‘Knit the City’ is a good example. Using knit to decorative our city, to bring happiness and arouse people interest toward little things around us. In this movement, knit is not only a domestic craft; it is a public art.

      Aprat from that, although we are in a technology-orientated region, surprisingly people tend to choose hand knitting instead of machine knitted.

   

    ‘Machines produce clothes more cheaply and quickly. But machines can’t 

    copy human handwork or create one-of-a-kind colours and patterns.

    Machines form stitches evenly and monotonously, with no trace of feeling.   

    Every stitch in a hand-knitted sweater bears the traces of a time, a trip, a

    landscape; of persons, events and thoughts.’ (Turney,2009 p.42)

Obviously people love hand knitting, as it’s much humanism. That explained why the strong revival of knitting being perceptibly found in hand knitting field.

       In a nutshell, ‘knitting allows makers to not “just” make things, but to communicate ideas, forge relationships, and make sense of and comment on the world around them.’ (Turney,2009 p.221) Today, knitting is more like a culture than a monolithic. Every knitter using different tools and knit in a different way. If you still feel knitting is dull and old fashion, you only knows a part of knitting, and there are many more.