Arm Knitting: Fad or New Standard?

Have you jumped on the arm knitting train? It's been pretty popular the past two years, but does it have the longevity to become part of the standard knitting repertoire?

Knitting projects can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months, or longer, depending on the amount of time you have in your schedule as well the complexity of the project. I'm all about the hat because they can be knit up relatively fast (I've a post coming out later this week on my love of hats).

(I've been taking a MOOC via Coursera on social media marketing. The class I'm currently enrolled in is on Engaging and Nurturing Marketing Strategies and one of our assignments is to create a blog post about trends we see in our target market area. So this post is a combination of assignment and update.)

I'm not going to lie, I've avoided the arm knitting craze for a while now, big, bulky yarns and scarves just aren't my thing. But since the weather as the weather's starting to get colder and I'm seeing more and more women wearing arm knit scarves and cowls, I thought that it'd be a good time to revisit the arm knitting craze.

A while back Wall Street Journal published an article by Rachel Dodes, entitled "Millennial Knitters Embrace Arm Knitting" in which she discusses the popularity of arm knitting among the Millennials. Ms. Dodes talks about its acceptance in the knitting community, where its origins may lie, as well as the frustrations some new arm knitters face during the learning process. Ms. Dodes provides excellent insight on the topic for those who fall on either side of the debate.

Image courtesy of Flax & Twine 

The second article I found was a post on Karen Templer's blog, Fringe Association, entitled "The moment my anti-"arm knitting" resolve crumbled." In it she discusses how she refused to get sucked into the arm knitting craze until one day while she was out came across the book Knitting Without Needles while out and about. After spending some time looking at the book, then the author's website, her opinion began to change and succumbed to the craze.

What do you think? Does being able to have a project done in an hour or less negatively impact the craft?

Or does arm knitting open knitting up to a new audience?  

Tell me what you think in the comments, or pop by my Twitter account and tell me your thoughts.