Knitting

Knitting was originally a job for the menfolk. Cristen and Caroline stitch together the mysterious history of the craft, how it transitioned to women's domestic work and how third-wave feminists reclaimed it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you from house Supports
dot com a little Welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about a subject
I have a feeling is near and dear to many
of our listeners, hearts and hands. Because whenever we periscope, Caroline,

(00:28):
oh yeah, we're real high tech live streaming kinds of gals. True,
whenever we get on that old periscope, there are always
at least a few stuff Mom never told you fans
watching us while they are knitting or crocheting. I know,
what a great combo of activities, creating something and then
like listening to us chatter. And we've also received from

(00:50):
time to time some hand knit presents from listeners, which
are always so special because obviously it takes a lot
of time and care to knit something, much less go
to the post office and send it, unless you're using
stamps dot com, which of course we urge you to. Um.
So we Yeah, we have a lot of knitters in

(01:13):
our audience. And Caroline, have you ever tried knitting before? Yeah?
So um. I'm generally not used to people taking me seriously,
but when I was in college, I was dating this
weirdo whose mother was like real sweet and all she
wanted was for her weird as send to date a
normal girl, and he was. And that should say something

(01:34):
that I'm like a normal girl in this situation. And
when I was over one time at her house with
the boyfriend for for dinner, I mentioned, like, you know,
I've alway kind of really wanted to knit, but you know,
again not used to people like taking me seriously when
I say things like that, because to me, like being
like I kind of want to learn to knit, it's
the equivalent of like I kind of want to learn

(01:54):
to like be a tight roab walker, like that could
be cool, but I have no natural balance, so I'm
in no danger of actually learning anyway. For Christmas, she
got me a how to knit book that came with
its own thing of yarn and plastic knitting needles. And
I was so excited because I'm like, oh, well, hey,
this is like so thoughtful. Someone actually listened to my

(02:14):
weird whims and everything, and so I think a lot
of people listen to your weird whims now. Um, So anyway,
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this. I opened the book,
I get the yarn ready, and step number one, I'm like, oh,
it's already too hard, Like how do I do the not?

(02:35):
And then they show you the steps. I need to
watch YouTube videos, like I think that would be the
more productive way for me to learn, because trying to
learn from pictures of people holding yarn and like wait, wait,
I need a picture between one and two? How did
you get from one to two? Like what did you
do with that? Not? I'm lost. And so I've never

(02:55):
tried to learn again because I'm really not like a
I don't you know if I fail all, I don't
really necessarily try try again. I have experienced the exact
same knitting intimidation because not only are the illustrations or
photos hard to follow sometimes, but immediately almost from step one,

(03:17):
they are speaking in their own language as well, because
there's a whole vocabulary to knitting. And I think I've
mentioned on the podcast before that I used to cross
stitch and crochet all the time as a child because
I grew up in little house in the prairie. I
was gonna say, um, but when I attempted to learn
knitting when I was in college, I just what I

(03:41):
really wasn't able to because I'm left handed and my
friend who was teaching me is right handed, and I couldn't.
We couldn't kind of flip it that way. But you
should have done it across from each other right then
it would have looked the same. Probably in a year
or something, I don't know, So I'm sure our listener
is probably have some suggestions on perhaps easier ways to

(04:03):
get started knitting. Oh, you know what I want to do?
What I want to do that thing that I see
on Pinterest all the time, which is like, uh hip,
young women like hand quote unquote hand knitting those blankets.
They use their arms as knitting needles with this huge
chunky like big giant fabric strips of yarn things staines. See.

(04:26):
I don't know the in group language. I think fabric
strips of yarn things is the official term. Perfect. I'm
glad I'm on the ball. But doesn't it give you
such an appreciation for the people who can knit? I'm
in awe of it, honestly, I know. Well, I'm just
impressed with anyone who gets over that first hump of like,
how do you get from step one to step two?

(04:49):
I sure don't know. Well, another intimidating factor when it
comes to knitting. Is it's intricate history. Yeah, because us
a lot of histories of knitting, say, well, it goes
back a really long time. We're not exactly sure when

(05:11):
we thought it was this certain point, but it turns
out that wasn't knitting, that was something else. Um, but
we do know generally speaking that knitting emerged in the
Islamic world between the ninth and eleventh centuries, and it
probably started with Arab men making fishing nets. Yeah, there's

(05:32):
this hilarious huff Po column about the history of knitting,
but it's it's it's written in the way that like
your smartass friend would talk to you, and it's hilarious.
But yeah, this the writer was talking about how it
likely the technology, so to speak, or the technique probably
got to start from people who were trying to weave

(05:52):
together these fishing nets to have a more productive, uh
fish catching expedition. And then next thing you know, they're
making sweaters. Yeah, so from fishing nets to turtlenecks. Well,
I mean, you know, I mean, I feel like a
fishing nets sweater could be fashionable. Maybe if you belt it.
All you need to do cut a hole in it.
You got a poncho, like you said, belt it but
a bang, but very briefly and year after the racest.

(06:15):
But I was surprised to see that it was ninth
to eleven centuries when it emerged, because I assumed that
it stretched back to ancient history, because oh, what about
the Odyssey with Penelope sitting there knitting a funeral shop girl?
She was not. She wasn't knitting not, did I not realize?
Was weaving? She was weaving, yeah, because she had to

(06:38):
weave on the on the loom, and then every night
she undid it because that was how she staved off
of her suitors. She was like, oh, I'll pick one
of you to marry once I'm done with this. What
was she doing? She was weaving a funeral shroud for
a disseus. Oh so just like really light fodder, just
like nothing, no big deal. Yeah, once I'm once I'm
done knitting her, once I'm done weaving this thing from

(07:00):
my dead husband, you can date me, guys. Well, there's
also the myth about is that it's Athena and a
Rachne who had like a weave off again, not knitting,
and Athena was like, I'm obviously better, but you're like
so good that I better just go ahead and turn
you into a spider because I'm jealous and I'm a
goddess and I've got issues. Probably got a goddess therapy

(07:21):
or maybe just a knitting circle where she could men relax,
get with harra, you know, and and persephone. I'm sure
that a sounds fun. I'm sure. I mean their goddess
is they're drunk all the time anyway. But another thing
knitting is flash was not is this thing called n
all bending, which, yes, it's a needle craft, Yes it

(07:42):
looks like knitting, and yes a lot of scholars thought
it was knitting for a long time. But not all
bending is a knitting like technique that uses just one
needle to not string together. And what a disappointing moment
it was when scholars real lie is that this surviving
scrap found in present day Syria from the year two

(08:05):
hundred that was thought to be the oldest knitted thing,
turns out it was just not all bending. I mean,
I shouldn't say just not all bending, because not all
bending is still an intricate craft in and of itself.
But you know, that had to be a bummer of
a day, like, oh man, we thought, I mean, like,
I think it's cool in and of itself, like oh
cool ancient technology, but or you know, kind of ancient,

(08:26):
not super ancient, but it's but it's not knitting. Uh um.
And then there are these reddish brownish Egyptian sandal socks,
which I'm pretty sure those were just made for cows
because it looks like they were made to go over
hoofed creatures. But those are from the years but sometime
between two fifty and four twenty a d. Also not

(08:49):
all bending, not knitting. Don't get confused. And I gotta
tell you Caroline. Side note. When I first read the
word no all bending, which listeners is spelled n A
L B I n D I n G, I immediately
thought of narwhals. So in my mind when I hear
it all bending, they're using their little horns to knit.

(09:11):
So there, yeah, because you only have one needle and
all bending, so they used their horn. Oh my god, illustrator, listeners,
get on that could a narwhale no all bend? Yes,
they could dominate? No all bindings. Could a narwhale no
all bend? If an all narwhale could not all bend fast. Well,
the confusing thing for me is like, okay, well, this
clearly like knitting, not all bending, got its start in

(09:35):
the Islamic world. Why does it have a Scandinavian name.
And it's purely because no, all bending was a technique
that Scandinavians used during the Viking Age, so that's just
where the name comes from. I'm sure it had its
own name in the Arabic or Islamic world that is
just simply lost to us. But another interesting little tidbit,
and I mean, we'll get back to knitting knitting, don't worry.
But another interesting tidbit is that meanwhile, while people are

(09:59):
using then all bending technique in Scandinavia, in what is
present day Syria and Egypt, people in what is now
Peru we're using the same technique as well to make
hats and shawls. So this was like a it's just
interesting to think about, like, oh my god, this technology,
this this narwhal technology just erupted cross cultural human ingenuity,

(10:22):
borrowed of course from normals. Yeah, and you said it
was just like a ninth century Islamic thing, but knitting,
knitting emerges in Egypt and spreads to Europe. And if
we go to A thousand and fourteen hundred a d.
We have these Egyptian Coptic socks, which we are this

(10:44):
gorgeous artifact of early knitting, and they were knit with
blue and white cotton, and they're the first knitted items
we have. But if you look at how complex the
patterns are, it's doubtful that they were the very first
things that people know because or if they were the
verse thing someone ever that is so impressive. Well, no,

(11:05):
they might be, because the legend goes at the magical
narwhale bestowed its knowledge to the Egyptian. So I'm sure
the nar walls already had these gorgeous blue and white patterns,
you know, blue and white ocean waves. We're putting it
all together in this episode. That's what we do, Kristen,
It's what we do. And as knitting spread to Spain,

(11:27):
it became a high class perk. It was something that
really only the wealthy could afford, right, and or people
in the church. So it was used if you a
prince or if you were like a priest, a priest,
I guess priest. Yeah, but they would use gold or
silver threads, So things things are getting real fancy. Um.

(11:49):
The first European knitting that modern archaeologists discovered, which was
a detailed silk pillow cover, was found in a Spanish
princess tomb dating to twelve seventy five. And you know,
to me, this really reminds me of our Tarot card
episode because in that episode we talked about how those
beautifully hand painted and elaborate cards migrated from the Islamic
world to Europe, particularly to Spain and Italy, and it's

(12:13):
and it's similar here. You see this beautiful, handcrafted technology
being brought to Europe from the Islamic world and becoming
a perk, like you said, for the wealthy. And when
we think of knitting today, we usually think of it
as a feminine past time. And that kind of imagery
of women sitting there quietly knitting goes back to art

(12:37):
in the mid fourteenth century. So you have Italian and
German painters starting to depict the Virgin Mary knitting while
hanging out with baby Jesus, you know, nitting him some diapers,
maybe who's to say, a cape the Lord he's super
baby Jesus. And so what this means of significance of

(13:01):
this iconography is that knitting had clearly spread far and wide,
and by this point was likely a common, unthreatening domestic
pastime of women, because, as Donna Cooler, author of the
Encyclopedia of Knitting, notes, it's highly unlikely that reverent altarpieces

(13:22):
of the Madonna and Christ would have introduced this revolutionary
knitting theme in there of her doing something that would
have been male dominated at the time, people would have
been like, no, no, no, that's super disrespectful, right exactly,
So she was clearly being depicted doing something that was
already feminized. And I think it's interesting too during this

(13:45):
era that in fourteen sixty five, in fact, possibly the
earliest recorded professional knitter was a lady person yeah, named
Marjorie Clayton of Rippon. She was described as a cap knitter.
But fair listeners, this is spelled c A P P
E in I T T E R all one word,

(14:07):
so that could be cape knitter, which I like to
imagine ties right back to super Baby Jesus um. But
if you say it all is one word, kapa knitter,
it almost sounds German, like an angry knitting cap nitta. Yeah.
I don't know, but cap knitter, I'm assuming that that
means caps, like a filted cap, filted cap. And around

(14:27):
the time that Marjorie Clayton of Rippon was getting started,
that was when knitting first appeared in the dictionary, coming
from a root word meeting to not. Okay, But as
knitting becomes more organized and we have guilds popping up,
knitting becomes a dude thing. Well yeah, because you have

(14:50):
to keep in mind, so like knitting really catches on right,
everybody's like, oh, ladies, be knitting, Knitting's happening everywhere. Just
dropped all mags. Sorry, um. But by the into the
sixteenth century, knitting is huge. It's big business and fancy
men have to wear their fancy knitted stockings to maintain

(15:11):
their fancy fashionable status. So what does this mean If
men are like, we have to have our stocking skies, dude, bros.
Stocking dude bros. Well, that means that people are picking
up on the fact that demand equals money. Yeah, so
you have the rise of all male knitting guilds, which

(15:32):
emerged to protect trade secrets and improve the professions quality.
And listen, if you wanted to join one, of these
knitting guilds. It was no joke. You had to train
for six years, three years as an apprentice to a
master three years this is kind of cool, actually three

(15:52):
years traveling the world learning new techniques, and then after
all of that you would come home take a knitting exam,
which involved having to knit all this stuff, including stockings
of course his dudes need their stockings back then, as
well as felted caps which sound adorable, cabinet and the
cab netter, and then intricate wall hangings. And we saw

(16:16):
some pictures of these, uh knitting exam wall hangings that
some of these dudes produced, and they are incredibly vibrant
and colorful and intricate, displaying all these scenes and yeah,
knitting knitting, Yeah, and they even display biblical scenes. There's

(16:39):
the one we saw had Adam and Eve and there's
like a lion and a unicorn, and I expected to
see something at a Game of Thrones there was n
wall cannot bear a new catchpright, where was then you
got it? Also, fun fact for these knitting fellas at

(16:59):
the time, they were probably using knitting needles made of
ivory bone or tortoise who's bones. The narwals. They got
narwhal horns, so tragic, but I thought that was pretty neat. Yeah,
that is pretty neat. Gorgeous tools you would use, I'm sure. Um.
And it's interesting to think about these knitters. So they

(17:23):
train for so long, right, they trained for years. And
another thing that I love to think about is the
idea that the wealthy had their favorite master knitters. Almost
the way that we think of like houses of design
today and fan fancy, high salutant designers today, there were
master knitters that different royal or noble families relied on

(17:45):
to do their knitting, to do all their fancy golden
thread gloves and silk pillow cases. And then with some
more human ingenuity. In fifty nine, an Englishman named William
Lee invinced the knitting machine. And this kind of changes
the whole scene a bit. It sort of takes it
down a notch from being this really elaborate art as

(18:09):
it was, to obviously being more widespread for mass manufacturing. Yeah,
so that by the time we hit the Industrial Revolution
and least technology has been improved upon, this machinery has
completely taken the trade out of artisans hands. I mean,
obviously they're probably there's still people in their homes knitting,

(18:30):
whether it's for their family or for neighbors, or you know,
to make a little extra money on the side. But
by and large, knitting becomes industrialized and those machines required
a lot of skill and physical strength. So for that reason,
men were mostly the ones running the big machines, which

(18:53):
meant that they had domain over technology, not only using it,
but of course learning new kinds as well, while women
were stuck being the penelopes of the group doing the
spinning and prepping raw materials for knitting, as well as
mending and in hand seeming the end result. And what's
interesting to see though, is that across Europe it's not

(19:15):
so much because like women have a place, women are
clearly natural born steamers of things, but that these tasks
just we're pretty much divided along strength lines. And this
is coming from Joyce Burnett's book Gender, Work and Wages
and Industrial Revolution Britain, which we did not read the
whole thing spoiler. We just read the section on the

(19:39):
gender division in industrialized knitting. But if you look in Nottinghamshire,
which I'm sure I said that wrong, because when you
have these long names from England that have like fifteen syllables.
Typically they're pronounced with two, so somebody can tell me,
I'm not sure, he's not sure, I'm not sure. Uh.

(20:00):
Eighteen nineteen we get a co ed Framework Knitters Union forming,
so women were already involved in their trades union back then,
and by eighteen forty five women operated about seven percent
of the knitting frames, though they would usually work on
narrower frames, because again, it's all about the physical strength.

(20:22):
And also in eighteen forty five a parliamentary report on
framework knitters, which I'm sure was just real scintillating copy,
emphasize equal opportunity, and in that they wrote, quote vast
numbers of women and children who children, okay it is,

(20:43):
are working side by side with men, often employed in
the same description of frames, making the same fabrics at
the same rate of wages, the only advantage over them,
which the man possesses, being his superior strength, which, okay,
it sounds sounds good. Basically you're saying, well, they're saying
women can do the job, but they're also saying little
children are doing the job. Well, they're tiny fingers, those

(21:06):
little fingers. Somebody's got to climb into those machines much energy.
But forty years later women, no big surprise, we're earning
less working those same knitting machines, and men argue that
they should be relegated to smaller, less productive women's machines.
And here's a side note a quote that I love

(21:28):
that I really wanted to share. So you know, during
this time their wage disputes, men are saying we should
be making more because we're working on the big or
more productive machines. Women should go over here to the
smaller machines since they're weaker with their floating uterus is.
But you get this guy, James Holmes, who's the secretary
of one of those co ed labor unions, and he

(21:49):
told a parliamentary commission that the difference between men's and
women's machines was basically false and made up. He said, quote,
it is so convenient for men to believe that women
cannot do certain things until they do it, and then
they find that the impossible is done. Dang James home.
So he's basically like, this is this is silly, But

(22:11):
no matter. There was still that gender division, and in
France it was pretty much the same thing. But you
you get the rise of these smaller, even smaller knitting
machines that were meant for home use. And what's interesting
to see is that manufacturers start targeting in their advertisements
working class families, basically saying, hey, ladies, ladies, this is

(22:36):
the way to earn a living. You get to stay
home and knit and raise your family. Stop being one
of those awful mothers who goes to work. Now you
can just knit at home. Yeah. They called it out work,
which was sending the mending and seeming work to women's
homes for them to do. And I don't have the
numbers in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that

(22:57):
they were not paid very well for the work. Um.
But it's interesting that these technological developments seem to culminate
in sending people back home because families have been producing
knitted goods as units a hundred years before. So you
have almost a return not to the cottage industry. I
mean we're still talking in like bigger manufacturing terms, but

(23:18):
they're outsourcing to those cottage industries in a way. Yeah.
So then you're, at least in France during this time anyway,
you're just sending women back home to mind the hearth
and home, and you know, if they if they're you know,
working class women who have to help support their families
by earning money, then at least they can do it

(23:39):
at home. Well, and I wonder if that really cemented
this association between knitting and women in the home as
a you know, the activity that women kind of do
while the men are out working in the factories. Well,
I mean, but you've also got those class divisions to consider,
because yeah, okay, you had working class women and in

(24:00):
this example, it's working class French women using the smaller
home knitting machines to make an extra buck, but knitting
this whole time, it's still pretty consistent that like pastime,
knitting is a thing, but that's still for women of
a little bit higher of a social standing who have
the time and don't need to knit for extra income.

(24:23):
And that's a theme that we're gonna revisit when we
talk about the resurgence of knitting in recent years. Um
but briefly, I want to talk about knitting during World
War one and two. And I know that that's a
huge leap from the Industrial Revolution, but during this time
we have them that image of women knitting even more

(24:46):
ingrained in our culture because it was promoted as a
patriotic duty. When the boys are at war, it was
women's jobs and children's jobs. To school kids would get
in on this as well. Tyingers, those tiny little fingers
to knit, knit their clothes, and they would knit socks
I believe for the soldiers that they would send over there.

(25:07):
So there was this whole like knitting propaganda um during
both wars, and there was also knitting involved in spy work. Yeah,
so this was really fascinating, Caroline. During World War Two,
there was a ban on mailing knitting patterns abroad in

(25:28):
case they might be coded. Because if you look at
the you know, and knitting instructions, I mean, it really
does look like a secret code to me. That's why
you should never trust in our wall exactly to my
untrained eye. So you couldn't send any um any knitting
patterns to your friends during those days. But the Belgian

(25:50):
resistance employed this group of an old lady knitters whose
houses were near the train tracks, who would watch the
trains and they would knit secret messages into their knitting,
like according to like what kind of stitch they would
use to let the resistance forces know what trains were

(26:12):
coming through and who were on those trains. So then
you mail the knitted final product and they're just like, oh, yeah,
I'm just like or they probably deliver it, you know,
and be like, Oh, I'm just giving this person a scarf.
It's no big deal. Secrets in it. Yeah, knitting secret,
knitting secrets, and I have one final knitting secret for
you please, Okay. So one of the coolest women that

(26:36):
I've learned about recently was a British World War Two
spy named Phyllis Latour Doyle and when she was twenty three,
under the code name Genevieve, she parachuted into occupied Normandy
to help out with a French resistance and she would
just bicycle around gathering information and and the codes that

(27:01):
she would send back to the Allies were in like
stitches that she would make um in this piece of
silk that she had, and she would hide the silk
and the codes in her knitting. What. Yeah, So she
was just like, Oh, I'm just so lady, just biking around.
This is just my knitting. Don't mind me. I want

(27:23):
to see that movie and I know, like Knitting It
War starring Granny's and that lady on the bicycle. So
I loved though, this secret history of knitting. Yeah, it's
pretty amazing what people who have very little suspected of them,

(27:45):
i e. Women with their what with their knitting and such,
can accomplish. But think about how intense that must have
been to to live during a time when you couldn't
even mail a knitting pattern to your friend in the
States because secrets, say secrets. Well yeah, and I love
I love reading about even the World War two efforts

(28:06):
to like knit socks and scarves and stuff for soldiers
abroad because yeah, like you said, it was totally propaganda.
It was a feel good thing for everyone and let
people feel like they were participating in something. But then also,
if you're the soldier in the trenches, like, no, a
pair of new socks or knitted socks isn't gonna make
or break whether you survive or succeed or whatever. But

(28:26):
it is a nice kind of homeye reminder of home,
A homie reminder of home. Yes, yes, indeed. Well, we
got to take a quick break, but when we come back,
we're going to be in the swing in seventies, my friends,
So hang onto your knitting needles. So we've gotten through

(28:57):
our world wars. Yeah, just low and through stuff. And
we're in the nineteen seventies and as UK based Penelope
Hemingway points out on her fantastic blog Knitting Genealogists, once
we get to that era plus second way feminism, there's

(29:17):
been a lot of gendering back and forth of knitting,
as we have clearly hopefully explained, and there were still
gender divisions going on within knitting at that time. Yeah,
so these are some TV shows I would love to
go back and catch snippets of. But she points out
that the expert knitters on TV shows in the seventies

(29:39):
tended to be men. Yeah, what are those shows? I
need to watch them? Kind of soothing? Oh, I know,
just like the clicking of the of the needles. SMR
City seventies a SMR um and she writes that it
was pretty common to discover that both male and female
knitters of this era had been taught by their grandfather

(30:04):
I love that, and I have a feeling that they
were taught by their grandfathers because their grandfathers had been soldiers,
and soldiers were taught to knit, yeah, they well, yeah,
you've got to be out there without your mama to
knit your socks for you. So if you had to
repair a hole in something, you had to know how
to do it yourself. You know, my father in the
Navy had his own little knitting kit. I don't think.

(30:26):
I don't think he ever knitted or like even repaired
a patch. I don't know. Maybe I'm selim dad short. Yeah,
maybe he was a secret knitter, secret knitter. We did
establish before the Break that knitting is full of secrets.
But as Hemingway points out, despite this fact, despite that
the expert television knitters tended to be men, and the
grandfathers were passing down their knitting secrets to their grandchildren,

(30:49):
the whole like men knitting quote unquote in public thing
had generally fallen by the wayside. So it's still it's
still thought of as like a feminine pursuit. It's a
feminine pastime, whether you're doing it because you need the
scar for whether you're doing it just to pass the time. Well,
and feminine and so domestic too. Yeah, so that women

(31:10):
of that era who liked to knit or wanted to knit,
we're almost classified as traitors to the cause, like to
the second way feminist cause, which is something that Himmingway
herself says she had experience with. She said that she
felt she needed to hide her desire and her love
of knitting. She writes, though, but the more I learned

(31:30):
of the craft's history, the more I realized that knitting
is a defiant feminist statement, not a sign of being
cowed by male oppression. Moving beyond feminism, it's full of
the triumph of the human spirit, creativity, artistry, and democracy.
And in fact, there was some feminist adoption even during

(31:51):
that time of the d I y ethos more generally,
as well as knitting and making your own clothes. Even
outside of feminism, during the Vietnam War, there was a
resurgence of interest in crafts that aligned with the protests.
Lifestyle um and Miss magazine, for instance, featured ads for

(32:13):
homemade feminist clothes and jewelry, which is something that we
see so much in third wave feminism and magazines like
bus Right Yeah. Bust is one of those which started
in the nineties. It was sort of on the forefront
of this get girls crafting thing. It was seen as

(32:34):
a way to sort of I wanted to say, get
back to nature, but like that's obviously not what I mean,
like get back to relying on yourself instead of relying
on big corporations to provide your clothes and accessories. And
we can see that trend reflected directly in statistics from
the Craft Yarn Council, which I'd love to see one

(32:56):
of those council meetings, imagining all of them in very
colorful knitted shoals. But they found the proportion of women
under forty five who knew how to knit doubled between
and two thousand two, from nine to and you know,
some third wave feminism was partially to thank for that. Yeah,

(33:16):
And an article in the journal Third Space in two
thousand eight, writer beth Ann Pitney emphasizes knitting's place as
a third wave feminist practice, saying that if second wave
feminists have been historicized as women who put down their knitting,
third wave feminists may be characterized as those who have
picked it back up again. And she links this to
the whole riot girl movements d I y Esthetic getting

(33:39):
out of the mall marketplace and getting into the sustainable marketplace.
And this takes me or right on back to high
school Caroline Um, when one of my best friends was
very much in the d I Y punk scene, and
a lot of them congregated at a specific house, and
all the girls were super riot, all e and there

(34:02):
was all sorts of zine making. Of course, most of
them were musicians, and a lot of them knit and
sewed and made, if not their own clothes, they would
make patches and buttons and all sorts of things. So
knitting was very much an activity that was like constantly
going on as almost a political act for these young

(34:23):
punks at the time. Well, yeah, and that's something that
Elizabeth Granoveld talked about two in an article in the
Canadian Review of American Studies from She didn't disagree that
knitting can be feminists, that it can be part of
that d I Y culture, but she has quibbles with
specifically third wave feminisms, publications, com modification of it, and

(34:46):
of d I Y culture. In addition to what she
and Pentney in her article that we just talked about
sees as ignoring the fact that for many women, like
we talked about earlier, knitting is a form of underpaid
labor or a way to save money on clothing. It's
not part of this what she saw as consumer culture
as politics that magazines like bust or bitch in its

(35:07):
early days, we're peddling. She kind of almost sees it
as a dishonest way of of approaching this d I
y ethos. Yeah, she describes it as classes and a
quote ironic iteration of idealized womanhood. And she distinguishes in

(35:28):
the process between crafting, which requires disposable income and time,
and the knitting that women would be doing for work
and like you said, often under paid work. So she
you know, raises her eyebrows at the idea of whether
this is just a hip new hobby that makes you

(35:50):
look like you are aware and you know, taking a
step back from the mainstream, or are you really just
part of the fold? Are you in their sheep? Well? Yeah,
and she points out, like, well, who is their audience.
It's you know, the twenty two year old white suburban
college student. Are we leaving out whole groups of knitters

(36:12):
of various classes, races, ages, Are we, you know, ignoring grandma?
Um when we talk about how knitting is this like
hip new thing, it's not like your dusty grandma's habit.
And it's like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa Your grandma was
parachuting into France with her knitting secrets. Yeah, I will
say again, um, speaking from personal experience, the rise of knitting,

(36:37):
in this renewed appreciation for handmade goods in particular, is
something that I almost wish it happened when I was younger,
because my family didn't have a lot of money and
my mom made a lot of our clothes and I
was often sheepish about that. Not to keep using the
word sheep for some reason it's appropriate, But from that

(36:59):
perspective of Gronoveld's classic argument doesn't hold quite as much water,
because while yeah, it does take disposable income in time
to do this kind of crafting, I think that it
had a wider impact of drawing appreciation to those kinds
of handmade things that people in lower income households could afford,

(37:22):
who could make themselves. Yeah. And I wonder though, if
she's not arguing that, like, that's fine and good, and
people need to knit for different reasons or want to
knit for different reasons. But when you talk about knitting
purely as like a hip hobby for young people, are
you leaving out the opportunity to appreciate people like your

(37:43):
mom or like whoever is knitting because they want to
provide for their family. And all of this being said,
Grennaville did acknowledge that in looking at like letters to
the editor and and things like that, that these magazines
were receiving and published, saying that a lot of the
readers looked at knitting as a pleasurable pastime, not as

(38:06):
a political statement. So it's not like you have a
bunch of people who are trying to reclaim knitting necessarily,
much more like, oh, well, oh, this is a nice
craft that I can do to provide for myself and
or and or my family, or that can just be
a soothing thing to do well. And I would argue too,
that it gives you a sense of empowerment and agency

(38:29):
because you are taking a ball of yarn that serves
you really no purpose and making it into something for
yourself or another person. And you and h at the
top of the podcast when in a great detail about
how challenging that is and to be able to successfully
make yourself something that can keep you warm, I mean,

(38:51):
that's kind of incredible. I think that that that's a
lot more than just oh you're just you're just crafting
because you have a little extra money in time. Yeah,
and after all, it was busts editor one of the
founding editors, Debbie Stoller, who pinned the book Stitching Bitch,
The Knitter's Handbook in two thousand three, which was sort
of like a a watershed knitting moment. It was um

(39:15):
in terms of paving the way for knitting to be
this like cool, trendy, okay thing to do. And she
pointed out that when you denigrate knitting, you denigrate femininity,
and this is another form of theemphobia. Other people would
argue knitting shouldn't be gendered, but uh, Stoller's point is that, like, yeah,

(39:37):
like women have been doing this forever, like, don't crap
all over knitting because it can be really rewarding. And
I remember around that time that Stitching Bitch came out,
um uh much cooler friend of mine gave me Bust
magazine and it was unlike anything I had ever seen before,
because of course there were all of the craft respects

(40:00):
to it. But I was like, oh my gosh, this
is this is a magazine for I didn't realize it
so much of the time I didn't have the language
for it, but like, oh, like young feminists like me.
Although there were lots of cat eyeglasses everywhere. Well, stitching
bitch is purely an update on our grandmother's uh knitting circles.

(40:21):
One girl who wrote in to Bust said that her
grandmother was so tickled that she was part of a
stitch and bitch circle because her grandmother was part of
a knit and natter circle. So it's the same thing.
And that's where Gronaveld's quibbles, I think come in in
terms of calling it an ironic iteration of idealized womanhood,

(40:43):
maybe insinuating that like, are we truly appreciating knittings history
or are we just doing it because it's kind of funny?
And I think for a lot of these girls, whatever
their motivation for picking it up was, it's so clear
that it turned into just a way of life for
so many people. I have a feeling that the hardcore
and knitters in our audience do not do it because

(41:05):
it's funny or ironic. I can't wait and I cannot
wait to hear from them on this topic and what
got them into knitting um. And it's also been interesting
to see, since you know, the early Adds and Stitching
bitch um, how knitting has gotten even more visible and
political in the sense of yarn bombing and that whole

(41:28):
thing um for anyone who's not aware of yarn bombing,
it's essentially going out. Rather than taking say spray paint
and painting murals or graffiti in public spaces to make
some kind of social or political statement or just to
enhance the visuals in some kind of way, you take

(41:49):
knitting and crocheting and wrap it around trees or park benches,
or in the case of the London Cast Off Knitting Club,
you cover a whole inc in Denmark to protest the
country's involvement in the Iraq War. They covered it in
this massive pink blanket. Well, speaking of benches, Kristen had

(42:13):
sent me this link to this story about a one
and four year old yarn bombing grandma who, along with
several other members of her community in Scotland, yarn bombed
all of these benches as a way to just it
was like half prank, half art project, and it's amazing
to see like all of the secrecy that went into

(42:35):
like okay, well, don't tell anybody that we're going to
be yon bombing these benches. Her story went viral across
the Internet because it's you know, which is kind of
ironic because there's still the idea of knitting is what
grandmas do. So you have this grandma who is knitting,
but she's yarn bombing, which is something that hit kids

(42:58):
today do to make statements. Yeah, and I mean it's
definitely Knitting has definitely made its way into the realm
of political protest. I mean, not only did you have
the tank in Denmark getting yarn bombed, but you have
groups like the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, which knits anti war
banners and arm bands but also holds knit ins as
a form of public protest. And people might argue like, oh,

(43:20):
what are you accomplishing with this? Well, I mean you're
certainly talking about it, aren't you, especially when there's a
whole group of people knitting in public together and just
in general. Knitting for charity has a long history. Um
going back again to our Craft Yarn Council meeting and
they're glorious shawls. In two thousand fourteen, sixty of survey

(43:42):
respondents from their group had made a project for charity.
So I mean think about blankets, hat scarves made for
babies and hospitals, people and homeless shelters or domestic violence shelters.
There is also Baryl Sayings project called tits Bit for
breast cancer survivors. Yeah, so she was knitting. She herself

(44:04):
as a breast cancer survivor who was really turned off
by all of the basically like boob replacement options. She
was not digging it, and so she knitted a prosthetic
breast and got a lot of other women in on
the game. She launches website tips bits where, which served
as like a community for women to share their stories,

(44:28):
share their pictures, uh knit their own boobs and mail
them in to be auctioned off. And it's just sort
of like a kitchy kind of like we talked about
in our Mystectomy Tattoo episode of like it's just kind
of a way to reclaim your body and express a
little bit of humor at the same time once you've
undergone this trauma. Well, and I can imagine that just

(44:49):
the process and the time that it would take to
knit those Unless you're like a really fascinator, I assume
that knitting something just takes years and years and years
because I have no experience, um, but I would imagine
in that process it's gotta be really healing because you're
going through that, you know, kind of having to sit
there and and reflect. Well, yeah, and you're I mean,
you're creating like these adorable boobs, and some of them

(45:11):
are multicolored. They've cut the little nipple at him and everything.
I kind of just want one. And I recently, speaking
of knitted boobs, I just saw a link to boob
beanies for babies. So when moms are out and their breastfeeding,
they put this boob beanie on their baby's head. So
you like you're glancing past, you're like, oh my god,
there's a boob. Wait, no, it's not a boob, it's

(45:33):
a baby. I'm confused. Wait, So the beanie goes on
the baby's head so like a booby, so that as
you're holding the baby up to your boob, there's like
a knitted boob on top of the baby's head. Trump
louel I also enjoyed the knitting performance art by craftivists

(45:55):
Casey Jenkins. Her piece was called Casting Off My Womb
and took place in an Australian gallery where she sat
for twenty eight days knitting from wool that she inserted
into her vagina. And of course it was twenty eight days,
so that she would be on her period at some
point during the project. And she talked about how challenging

(46:17):
it was to knit with the period blood soaked wool
because it's wet and heavy and just harder to work with.
You can imagine twenty eight days of that is just
like that, just to me spells yeast infection. I know. Yeah, yeah,
um yeah. We watched a video of it and it

(46:37):
was very mesmerizing. Um, she was just sitting naked with
the yarns just coming out of her vagina coming out.
What was she making a scarf? Do know what she's thinking?
She was making a scarf. She made a scarf. Yeah,
and she part of the idea is that it's confining,
she said, because I'm attached to this knitting statements on

(46:58):
women's bodies. Craftivism, man, Yeah, craftivism is a real thing.
We We have run across feces and dissertations all about craftivism.
People take it very seriously. And going back to Pentney,
in her two thousand eight paper, she talks about the
reclamation of knitting, but she talks about it from the

(47:20):
perspective of knitting needs to be claimed and reclaimed by
a whole host of people. It's She says that knitting
is unique in its ability to attract politically motivated people,
including feminists, d I Y subcultures, and queer communities, which
is an ability that's further, she says, by these online
knitting communities and blogs, most of which are geared towards women.

(47:42):
But she argues, let's not forget the male knitters, the
queer knitters, people of different genders and sexualities, in order
to push knitting out of this white, hetero feminine box.
And so I think it's interesting that here's a person,
unlike Debbie Stoller who was saying, let's embrace the femininity
of the knitting tradition, uh, Hentney's arguing like, let's not
make it feminine at all. Let's have everybody knit and

(48:04):
get rid of this feminine connotation knitting for everyone. And
I mean, speaking of male knitters, there are more dudes
getting in on the knitting action. And I still love
the idea of grandfather's teaching their grandsons to knit. Um.
There have been a number of trend pieces in recent

(48:25):
years on men knitting and the side I that they'll
get if they're saying knitting on the subway because people
are like, oh, a man who's knitting, How strange. Yeah,
A lot of guys in these trend pieces talk about
how yeah, like they get the side I when they
go into the yarn shop um from some women who
are like, what are you doing in here? This is
a lady space, which it shouldn't be. That way should

(48:48):
be for everybody. But it's interesting that the tone of
a lot of these articles and interviews is claiming and
reclaiming and re reclaiming knitting and from from whom because
over the centuries, we've clearly seen that knitting has just
gone back and forth between being uh, wealthy and male

(49:09):
and like super professionalized and like feminine and just in
the home and a in a hobby. So I don't know,
like do we need to do we need to gender
knitting at all? Like should should we agree with Stolen
and say like, yes, it's a feminine practice and we
need to embrace that femininity. Let's stop being afraid of
feminine things. Or do we agree more with Pentney who
says like, let's bring everybody into it. I think, if anything,

(49:33):
gender wise, my stance would be don't let the femininity
associated with knitting scare you away from it, whether it's
the embracing of femininity or the old school masculinity associated
with it. I think that's like kind of besides the point,
it's more a thing of like, you know, don't let

(49:56):
it deter you. But it reminded me so much. Stories
that came out I want to say, like a few
years ago then that were hailing the first beer brewers
being women because we think of beer as a man's drink,
and um there I don't know if there was a
new study or what, um that was um clarifying how

(50:17):
back in the day women would brew a beer. And
so you have all these pieces of like ladies, beer
was actually originally something that we made, and in these
male knitting trend pieces exact same kinds of leads of
like fellows. This lady thing was actually something that we started.
And so it is. Of course I love finding out

(50:41):
the gendered origins of things, but I do think at
a point too, as in the case of knitting, it's like,
do we really need to do that today? Well, especially
since knitting clearly originated with nor Wals. Yeah, and I
mean boy Narwhal's Girl nor walls spectrum, gender spectrum in

(51:01):
our walls of all sexualities, like no one's talking about them,
you know, yeah, I mean they've really been left out,
not in our conversation, but certainly in the greater conversation.
That's right. Well, if you're on our wall or not,
we would certainly love to hear from you about this
very brief history of knitting and the whole gendered aspect

(51:24):
of it. And if you're a fella knitter, and I
know that we have guy knitters and crochetres in our audience,
we want to hear from you what your experience has been.
People who adore knitting or no any knitting facts that
we did not share, please share them with us. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email address.

(51:44):
You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
letter here from Michaiah. She says, this is a somewhat
unconventional email to send you, but I wanted to tell
you about something unconventional that your podcast is done for me.

(52:07):
I am eighteen years old now, and when I was
about sixteen I began listening to your podcast, which I
really enjoy I distinctly remember listening to your podcast where
you discussed how women are referred to as ladies or
lady rather than women, which I cannot seem to find
in your huge archive of past podcast So I hope
you remember what I'm talking about. Don't worry, Makay, we do.

(52:27):
She goes on to say, I was on my school
bus and I remember thinking that the word lady didn't
feel right for me. Girl and woman didn't seem to
work either. Trying to call myself these things just felt
wrong and awkward, but I brushed it off at the time.
A short time later, I started thinking about my gender
identity and how something wasn't right, which led to the
path of my first identity as a Demi girl and

(52:49):
now as an a gender person. Although I am now
confident that I am a gender, I will not forget
how wonderful it felt to find the identity of Demi girl.
It felt so safe and secure to know that there
was a word for who I was. I have spent
the last couple of years coming to terms of being
a sexual, gray, a romantic, and a gender. I like
to say that I have all of the A specific

(53:09):
boxes ticked and knowing that I am real and am
not alone. I'd like to thank you for all of
your podcasts, but especially for this particular one, which inadvertently
sparked my journey into self discovery and finding out who
I am. Thank you so so much, and keep being awesome. Well,
thank you, MICHAELA. And you keep being awesome. Well, I've

(53:31):
got a letter here from ash Lean about I A Garden,
and she writes, the whole time I was listening to
your episode about cooking shows, I was hoping that you
had mentioned the Barefoot Contessa and A Garden. Sure enough,
you mentioned her, but I was a little disappointed to
find out you didn't seem to know about her impressive background. Well,
she's certainly enjoyed a lot of privilege in her life.

(53:53):
I've always been so impressed by her pre Barefoot Contessa accomplishments.
Long before coming a successful food network star, ms Garden
worked in the White House in the Office of Management
and Budget, working on nuclear energy issues. She has an
MBA from George Washington University and even has her pilots license.

(54:14):
Caroline can reassure her boyfriend that she's very educated, successful
woman who really is living her best life by her
own choice. Her trajectory reminds me so much of Julia
Child's having embarked on a second career in cooking only
after first achieving success in a less stereotypically feminine profession. Anyway,
I just thought you two lovely feminists, would want to

(54:35):
know something. My mom definitely did tell me that you
didn't seem to know. She's a big fan of Ena
Garden and an even bigger fan of providing her daughter
with many different examples of strong, successful women. Ashleyne, thank
you so much for this letter. Shout out to Ennah
Garden and also shout out to your mom. Sounds like
a rad lady, Um and listeners. Keep your letters coming,

(54:58):
mom stuff at house stuffworks dot com, where you can
send them, and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources so you can learn more about
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(55:19):
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