Spent another enjoyable weekend up at the cabin this weekend. Sadly, the rhododendrons have long since shed their blooms. We even noticed that some of the leaves have started to turn, so looks like an early winter. Monte and I were accompanied by his mother this trip and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner Saturday night at The Fat Lady Café, due to a brief power outage resulting from the passing thunderstorms, as well as a gorgeous, sunny afternoon on Sunday at the Bethel Woods Harvest Festival, which is located at the original Woodstock Festival site 10 minutes away. Didn't get much knitting done as a result, although I did finish the first skein of the Hotaru Scarf while traveling. Explored technical aspects for the blog and got around finally to playing around on Ravelry. While there, I saw an email from way back in July that I thought would make a perfect topic for my next blog entry.
July was the first (and last) chance that I had to check out Ravelry and while there, I posted a quick entry on knitting during the Olympics. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that
Steph wasn't going to organize another Knitting Olympics this time out. Who could blame her? I got the impression that she was totally surprised by the overwhelming response to the first one and I suggested that maybe she didn't want to put in all that effort again and that someone else could pick up the torch, so to speak. I certainly didn't want to give people the impression that Steph is lazy or that she doesn't follow through on what she starts. (As if anyone could believe that!) I was just disappointed that she had decided not to organize it this year, as I had such a blast creating team buttons and participating in THE knitting event of 2006. However, I was also making a comment on people who need to have someone else organize an event in order for them to knit. I have knit through every Olympics since Lillehammer in 1994 and Beijing would be no exception. I said that I don't need anyone's approval to knit something during the Olympics and I could follow her guidelines if I wanted to, especially as I loved the experience so much last time.
During these games, I would mention to other knitters that I was working on my Olympics project and explain the rules that governed my knitting. Someone mentioned the Ravelympics and I thought that someone had, indeed, picked up Steph's idea and organized it on Ravelry. However, the email that has been waiting for me in my message box on Ravelry since July informed me of a few disturbing developments that I wanted to discuss in my blog entry today. While listening to Episode 13 of the
Y Knit podcast, which featured Larissa Brown of Knitalongs fame, I was struck by how Steph's Knitting Olympics weren't acknowledged as the first, truly worldwide knitalong to have taken place. Now, I realize that Larissa was there to push her book and that the Knitting Olympics, I must admit, weren't set up like most traditional knitalongs, but Steph did manage to get about 5,000 people from around the world to work on a project at the same time and I felt that she should have received some credit for her accomplishment.
When I got home, I pulled out my Fall 2008 issue of Vogue Knitting and got around to reading the brief article on the Ravelry phenomenon. (Yes, I did research for this post!) Despite the fact that men are completely overlooked as knitters by the author, this essay provided me with a quick and dirty introduction to how Ravelry came to be. Once again, there is no mention of how Steph's brilliant idea had obviously influenced the development of this new online community. (If Steph's husband were a computer programmer instead of a music producer, Ravelry may well have been created by her.) After all, Ravelry is simply a natural progression from the Knitting Olympics: Steph organized us into a community in 2006 and Ravelry allowed us to start communicating with each other in 2007. However, a subsequent review of the Ravelympics group revealed some disturbing trends that the business owners may want to consider as they proceed. The rules for their event were copied and pasted verbatim (stolen) directly from Steph's blog; not even the first person commentary that I remembered so vividly was changed at the new site. True, there was a token statement acknowledging Steph's contribution, but the overall effect of the group on me was that these organizers had ripped her off completely.
I also remembered that I was a little put out the first time that I heard the term Ravelympics in a conversation at one of my local yarn stores because it wasn't their idea; it was Stephanie's! Of course, once anything is sent out over the internet, the originator loses all control over it. There is no way that Steph could have taken out a patent on her creation and enforce any unauthorized use on the part of Ravelry members. However, rebranding someone else's idea just seems wrong, much like the copyright infringement of patterns. It could be argued that individual members of the Ravelry community were at fault, but I feel that the business owners should be perceived as being at least a little complicit if they failed to act and allowed their own brand name to be associated with such a development. Ironically, Ravelry has grown so large in such a short time that I must recognize that there is no way that they could possibly police all of their members without stifling the open communication that they, themselves, have created. Still, Steph's Knitting Olympics was such a high-profile event that they should have been aware of what was going on with the Ravelympics on their own site.
Unfortunately, the experience of my own, unofficial Beijing 2008 Knitting Olympics will always be tainted in my mind as the Ravelympics just seems to be so contrary to the spirit of the Olympic Games. True, people were brought together once again, but it feels as if some of the athletes got away with doping.
