Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?

Robyn, our nifty SP10 hostess, has set up a contest for the participants in her group (apparently posting our SP10 questionnaire answers was contest #1):

Contest #2. Please post about your fave knitting accessory!
Talk about it, photograph it, explain how you use it, and why you love it.

My favourite knitting accessory is..... (drumroll, please)

Here's a hint: you're using at it right now...

THE INTERNET!!!!

(YAY! BALLOOONS! STREAMERS! CONFETTI CANONS!)

The internet is my ultimate knitting accessory. It's a resource that serves my knitting needs and enhances my knitting life in so many ways, I think it will be hard to enumerate them, but I'll try:

1. Inspiration - do I really need to spell it out for you?

2. Patterns galore - oodles of free ones (we are apparently a generous bunch) and lots of gorgeous paid downloads (as well as the extremely valuable opportunity for budding designers and self-starting publishers to disseminate their own patterns via e-commerce and thus develop their craft by doing it).

3. Fibre and needles and stitchmarkers... OH, MY! All sorts of wonderful stuff from knitting materials, tools and paraphernalia to knitterly gifts can be purchased, ordered, sold or swapped via the internet.

4. Research - techniques and tutorials, fibre facts, historical information, KALs and more, etc., etc.,...

5. Border-less community building - swaps like SP# and all the wonderful KALs and the myriad knit-blogger rings and...

6. Social Action - Have you seen how much goodness has been raised by knitters' good works initiatives? Go see the total (so far) at the Yarn Harlot's Knitters without Borders. Ever heard of StreetKnit or The Sheltering Stitch,... not to mention the many other like endeavours (as I said, we're a generous bunch).

BTW - has anybody done a comprehensive list or tally of the fibre-arts related charitable initiatives? I'd love to see that.