The global knitting village

I rang up Tapestry Craft in Sydney (on their 1800 number) to order some sock knitting needles today – everywhere in Melbourne seems to be out of the 2mm needles or else they are charging ridiculous prices for fragile wooden toothpicks I know will snap within about 3 seconds of me using them (speaking from experience) – I would have just bought over the net except I couldn’t see any secure encryption on the site (they may have it but I couldn’t see it). How did people survive pre-internet? I am buying yarn from Holland, needles from Sydney and a pattern from the USA with funds and some of the goods being transmitted via services that didn’t even exist 10 years ago! I have this nifty tool on my blog that tells me how many people have visited and from what countries their computer is located in (you can even set it for cities but I find that a little too creepy). And if I wanted to, I could join the “Tour de Fleece” knit-a-thon where thousands of knitters around the globe are knitting and spinning yarn while they watch AND COMMENT ON the bicycle race, the Tour de France. (Drug testing not mandatory for most of the knitters.)

The world in 2007 is a wonderful and very strange place. Yes, there are still so many people dying of starvation and preventable illnesses and in stupid wars and maybe climate change in the not too distant future will destroy us all. And increased material wealth has not solved the problems of sadness and isolation and mental illnesses; although the internet now enables us to know we are not alone, no matter how obscure our personal issue.

What would our ancestors working 18 hours a day to just survive and never travelling more than 20km from home in their lifetime think?