Knitters of the world -- delight!

I've been a knitter for more than twenty years and, more than that, I've been a knitting book collector. This was always sort of a treasure hunt activity. Go to the store, badger the clerk to tell you whether there even was a knitting book section in the craft area, and then carefully comb over the five books available to see if there was anything worth collecting. It was always quite exciting to find a lovely book for my collection. Lately, I've been aware of noises about how trendy knitting is becoming. At soccer practices and games, I see Moms and daughters struggling valiantly to knit bobbly, misshapen scarves, and I see snippets about knitting Hollywood stars (which would be very World War II, except that they're not knitting for soldiers but, more probably to pass time at anti-War protests). This new trendiness didn't really hit me, though, until I went to a big bookstore the other day, having some time to kill, and wandered over to the knitting section. Imagine my surprise to find seven jam-packed shelves filled with knitting books. Contrarian that I am, rather than finding it exciting, I was completely overwhelmed. However, overwhelmed or not, I still think it's a wonderful thing that knitters today have so much information available, rather than being shunted off to dark and dusty corners.