I found this article in the Chicago Tribune. It's really intersting to see how people are soooo addicted to knitting!
By Maggie Galehouse Houston Chronicle Published July 6, 2006 HOUSTON -- A mutant strain of World Cup fever is spreading over the Internet and into the hands of an unforeseen, but not unwelcome, audience.
Knitters who blog.
A self-proclaimed knitting addict from Ireland, who stitches and bitches at www.yarn-monkey.blogspot.com, has launched a global knitting competition framed around the 2006 World Cup games.
Hundreds of knitter-bloggers -- Americans, Brits, Kiwis, Japanese, French, Germans, Brazilians, Africans and Australians -- have signed on to start and finish a project of their choosing by this Sunday.
There's a Texan on the team: Michelle Kutrybala, a mother of five who lives in El Paso.
"I knit anyplace I can," Kutrybala says. "While the kids watch TV. When sports are on. Waiting for doctors' appointments (I have a ton of appointments)."
According to Yarn Monkey, a 30-year-old film and TV producer who prefers not to reveal her real name, the winner gets "a top swag bag full of goodies" that include a knitting satchel and posh yarn.
The Knitting World Cup exists because Yarn Monkey hates "football" and wanted something to take her mind off it, or at least make it bearable.
"The level of frenzy here in Europe for the World Cup is overwhelming," she says. "Every commercial break for the last eight weeks has been full of World Cup-themed advertisements."
So she decided to knit along with the competition.
Competitors must finish before the final whistle of the final match Sunday.
"I rebelled against the idea of all this girly knitting malarkey for many years," says Yarn Monkey, who finally fell under the needles' spell when pregnant with her second child.
"It's a very sensual experience, the touch of the yarn, the feel of the needles," she says. "There's a great deal of satisfaction to be derived from that."
technorati tags:knitting, addicted
