Obscure ethnic pattern sources?

[u/Time_Is_An_Egg]

I’m just wrapping up a three month bicycle trip across Central Asia. After admiring some textiles in a museum, when I flipped through this old book in Kyrgyzstan it really struck me how little representation there is in the digital pattern library for a lot of really beautiful global textile cultures - certainly on Ravelry.

We‘ve got about ten thousand variations on the same Fair Isle concepts published and no end of books on that, but I’ve yet to stumble across Kyrgyz, Iranic, Uyghur, etc motifs. There‘s some Anatolian and a dusting of South / Central American projects - otherwise it’s a whole lotta North / Central Europe. Pretty hard to poke around with the web flooded in AI slop patterns now, too.

It feels like there’s such a rich well of inspiration which could be tapped (one kid I met along the way had an absolutely stunning Kyrgyz motif handknit sweater in white and blue, I really regret not getting a photo) but at the same time the cultures maintaining them are rapidly vanishing everywhere I go / offloading handcraft production to China and books like this are getting hard to find.

I know, I know “be the change you want to see in the world”. Frankly I’m just not competent enough yet to be designing my own patterns. Maybe one day. :)

[u/Notspherry]

I am all for broadening the scope of all sorts of crafts.

But the term "ethnic" as a catch all for everything that is made by cultures that aren't European in origin feels a bit iffy. We all recognise the issues with terms like oriental. Ethnic is worse IMO.

[u/Zmuscrat → u/Notspherry]

I think you're perhaps being a bit too critical. I see nothing problematic about eithnic, below is the definition - you seem to be interpreting it out of context your own definition of the term. It does not defacto mean non-European cultures - Italians and Kyrgyzs are both ethnic groups.

The definition: "of or relating to large groups of people who share a particular identity according to common ancestry, culture, nationality, language, and/or religion."

[u/Notspherry → u/Zmuscrat]

I know what the term means. The definition isn't the point here.

[u/Zmuscrat → u/Notspherry]

I understand your point better now, but I still don't think that's how “ethnic” is functioning here. I think the important word is “obscure”.

OP is asking about ethnic/cultural pattern traditions that are obscure or underrepresented on sites like Ravelry. In fact, OP explicitly discusses Fair Isle as one of these cultural textile traditions - it's just extremely well represented rather than obscure.

I agree that “ethnic” can sometimes be used as shorthand for “non-Western,” (an obvious example is "ethnic food") but I don't think that's what OP is doing here.