Today’s post is a guest post by Joe Wilcox – Queerjoe.
Most of his postings are knitting and craft related, but he also says a lot about his life in there as well.
I first met Joe back in 2008 for the first Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat, held at Easton Mountain in New York state. He is a kind gentlemen, a big extrovert and all around just fun person to be with.
I hope you enjoy his post! Please go check out his blog – there are lots of interesting things to read and look at there.
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An American’s View of Canadian Knitters
About 28 years I’ve been knitting, blogging about knitting for over 10 years and organizing a men’s knitting retreat for over 6 years, and working in the lovely Province of Alberta for about 2 years, I have had the opportunity to come into contact with many Canadian knitters and have gotten to see firsthand how they differ from their American counterparts.
Disclaimer
Lumping all of the Canadian knitters and American knitters into two distinct groupings will obviously have some shortcomings. And I’m sure Danny’s readers, both American and Canadian will be able to come up with a number of exceptions to my conclusions. Make sure you leave plenty of comments to let Danny and I know.
Top 10 Differences Between Canadian and American Knitters:
1. Canadian knitters turn to knitting as a return to a simpler way of life whereas Americans take it on as another frantic pet obsession they can spend money on.
2. Canadians are much more technical knitters and want to understand the exact structure, torque and slant of various cables, or will try out multiple variations on decreases for a knee sock until the shaping of the calf is perfect or will take great pains to calculate the exact number of stitches required to decrease to get a perfect circle using all their college-level math, while the Americans will get it “close enough.”
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3. Canadians elevate crafting to an academic pursuit and even have colleges where you can get a degree in spinning. Tell a non-knitting American that you knit, and they’ll picture a crochet toilet paper cover and reply, “How quaint.”
4. Canadian knitters tend to either be extremely well-known and popular, like Stephanie-who-no-longer-needs-a-last-name (mostly because of their folksy wisdom…see number 1) or fly under the radar and are visible only to those that search them out.
5. Canadians knitters that fly under the radar are well worth searching out.
Going clockwise from top left: Barb Brown, Danny Ouellette, Veronik Avery and Ted Myatt.
6. Canadian knitters are not afraid to travel to attend a knitting event. Canadians are generally not afraid to travel.
7. Canadians have little control over taking on all aspects of knitting once they’ve started…I’m convinced that eventually, every Canadian knitter will eventually be raising sheep so they can be involved in all aspects of the craft.
8. Canadian knitters are content to sit in a group of knitters knitting without anyone talking. Americans, not so much.
9. Canadians are more literal, straight-forward and earnest than American knitters and Canadian knitters get uncomfortable when pattern instructions are vague or missing things. Having an instruction in a sweater pattern such as “Reverse all shapings for the left side” or “keep knitting until it looks good” irritates them, even though their politeness would prevent them from saying anything about it.
10. Finally, Canadians resent having to use U.S. size knitting needles. Telling a Canadian to use a US8 needle and worsted weight yarn is like nails on a chalkboard. Like Quebecois who pretend not to understand English when it’s spoken to them, many Canadian knitters will ask the needle size in millimeters (or is it millimetres?) even though they know full well what size to use.
