Ubiquitous

Filigree Ensemble from Heartstrings

I enjoyed writing about my discovery of the new word (to me anyway) "mitochondria", that I thought that I would add a blog or two on interesting words that could be related to knitting. So, for this post I have chosen the word "ubiquitous" meaning everywhere - omnipresent. Discussing interesting words, also gives me a chance to talk about their roots - mainly Latin and to remind everyone to join Latin Wednesdays on Facebook with the XRX group and other dabblers like myself!

Ubiquitous comes from the Latin words "ubi" - where and "que" - and or plus - so the literal would be where plus or everywhere. It has come to have a somewhat negative meaning in the sense that we become bored with what seems to be everywhere - such as, the ubiquitous Crocs - those rather ugly, but I guess quite comfortable, large rubber? slip-ons with holes. At the height of their ubiquitous-ness (not a real word), I was beginning to think that life was a "croc." Anyway they are still around, but, not as omnipresent as before - we have now moved onto "Uggs" - not sure what will be next. Can I say life is an "ugg"? Maybe not - how about "hug."

Fretwork mittens from Le Tissier

I would like ubiquitous to have more of a positive spin, though, so that it could refer to knitting. Wouldn't it be wonderful if knitting were everywhere. Not just in "bombings" but you would just see people knitting, a bit like we see them texting on their cell phones - awesome!

Well  we are not there yet, but we do go through trends in knitting, so that as far as the niche circle of knitting is concerned, "eyelash yarn" was definitely ubiquitous a few years ago.  I would say that hand dyed yarn is so right now and certainly sock and scarf patterns are everywhere!  What seems to be very sparse and this would be the antonym, is any pattern using intarsia. I thought that this might become a "new" trend and I blogged about it a few years ago - but nothing has materialized. Too bad, intarsia has lots of possibilities.

The ubiquitous in food would be pasta and the Italian restaurant - these are not negatives.  Where would we be without pizza, pasta, and pesto? The pictures are of knitted hand decorations for the ubiquitous electronic devices!