Hipster alert

U.S. News & World Reports encourages readers to "Knit a Sweater, Hipster Style" among its 50 ways to improve your life in 2008. Poor, poor weekly print publication, don't you realize that "hipster" is used as an epithet online? That's old media for ya.

Plus, outside the knitting community, is it really something that's viewed as being hip? Are throngs of twentysomethings with asymmetrical haircuts squeezing into their skinny jeans so they can spread the knitting gospel around Williamsburg?

The two-paragraph article begins, "Somewhere on the way to kitsch, knitting suddenly became cool." It then proceeds to describe projects that make it sound like knitters are trying too hard to turn the needlecraft into something edgy. I suppose that suffices when a writer need an angle for a hobby that might seem lame to outsiders. If it was going to be positioned as one of the new "in" things, I would have preferred for knitting's therapeutic value to be highlighted.

Maybe knitting is a trend that will fade in popularity, but as someone who has been knitting for a little more than a year, I don't see it as a temporary thing. Those who pick it up because it is fashionable for a period may not stick with it, but the passion I see on Ravelry indicates to me that knitting is more than a passing fad for many. I keep hearing how market customization is where everything is headed. What is knitting if not an ultimate way of customizing? And there's no need for a middle man.