Here is one (not the only) of the reasons I wanted to visit Shetland this autumn. This week, the organizers of Shetland Wool Week, now in its 10th consecutive year, have announced (see here) one of its landmark events: the nomination of this year’s edition’s patron, in the person of designer and knitter Wilma Malcolmson.
The event, the organization and celebration of which, as everything in our world right now, is pending on the evolution of the coronavirus pandemic in the following months, brings together there (this year, hopefully, from the 26th of September to the 4th of October) a lot of wool and knitting lovers not only from Britain, but from all parts of the world, to an ample array of workshops, seminars, guided visits, music events, etc.
I wanted to be present there this year. We will see in the following months.
Humanity’s age-old endeavour, the cooperative cultivation/advancement of civilization (who of us remembered a collective historical milestone like the eradication of smallpox in 1980?), has not only been put to a halt, but reversed, quashed (and not only in terms of public health, but of public culture, of public arts, of public heritage, of public education, of, as society, as citizens, together averting the dreadful global environmental threat), by our late obscenely brazen embrace of this disregardful mercadization/commodification of it all.
Stop that!
