I’ve only just realized this year that I’m a huge fan of niche self-organization within the knitting community. In college I thought that knitting was the universal language of friendship, but duh, the only knitters I met were other college students living in a designated nerd dorm. Today there are no shortage of loud and proud knitters in the world, so theoretically we should all be able to find a few of ‘em with other interests similar to our own, eh?

Over on his personal gaming-related blog, my friend JC had a really kickass idea:

Gamercraft: a site for people to post their game-related craft projects, like, say, t-shirts and bead pictures, and to share templates, how-tos, and ideas. Basically Craftster for game nerds. So why not just use Craftster? Two reasons: first, it would be very useful to have all of the materials follow the same theme, so that when you see someone’s backpack, you know it’s going to have a videogame theme, instead of looking at page after page of emo band logos and stuff I’m just not at all interested in; and second, part of why I like these crafts is that it makes me feel like part of a gamer community. Limiting the site’s domain to game stuff would make it more likely to attract an interesting, tight-knit group of people with very similar interests to my own.

I really hope he gets this together. As a person who gets a huge kick out of online community-building, crafts, and also games, this seems pretty brilliant. A theme-specific site like Gamercraft would attract a very specific bunch of people from the bloated online gaming and crafting communities. I envision the ensuing craft discussion spawning less knitalongs, but also less conversation that sounds like

SupaCraftChristy: wow, nice job
Someone’s Mom: Wow! Nice Job!
JustACatLady:That looks beautiful! Here is a picture of my cats playing with that same yarn. I love yarn! And cats!
jennicrochets: how u knit? i cant knit can u make this with crochet insted thx