I think for clarity it's useful to differentiate two forms: (i) the "cool", hacker mode of knitting and the (ii) the grandma mode. Knitting and sewing have become popular in hacker circles (e.g. <a href="http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/03/22/the-cool-new-thing-with-tweens-sewing/" rel="nofollow">http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/03/22/the-cool-new-thing-w...</a>). The main differences between the two, I think, are that in (i) the practitioners formalize and think about the system for improvement whereas in (ii) knowledge is learned by informal apprenticeship (my grandmother did great needlework and knitter, never saw her read any patterns like the ones given in the OP) innovations are rare, maybe 2-3 new patters per decade.<p>Similar differentiation apply to cooking and other disciplines which require discrete, well-defined steps to arrive at a precise result, the number of dishes in any given cousine are tiny compared to the menus of recent innovative chefs.<p><i>This</i> I think is a great analogy for programming, there are programmers who learn their trade from copying code, reading guides, etc. and these guys can churn out useful code. However, unless you think about what you are doing, formalize it, reify it, and search for ways to improve it you won't invent anything new.