What do Knitting and Espionage have in Common?

Knitting and espionage? What could they possibly share? A lot, as we learned from reading Jenny O’Brien’s new romance novel, The Resistance Knitting Club, which was inspired by the true story of how knitting was used by women working for the British Special Operations (SOE) during World War II. With its two stitches, knit and purl, knitting is a binary system, which makes it a great stand-in for Morse code. Even more, it was knitting’s very ordinariness that made it a great spy cover. This is the sad irony of knitting’s superpower in the espionage war context: as women’s work, it has a long history of being overlooked and ignored, so a woman sitting in a corner, quietly recording conversations in knits and purls, could not possibly be of consequence. So knitting has a new potential in wartime because as women’s work, it’s never been important. Le sigh. O’Brien’s novel made us want to read the biography of Pippa Latour, a real World War II spy, so stay tuned for the second part of what we have now decided is a “series” on knitting and espionage. Oye the weather. We are both tired of it, between the “Spring Tease” or “Fool’s Spring” followed by snow and the “Atmospheric River” in Seattle and the still-18-degree-mornings in Massachusetts. The only consolation is having fabulous sweaters to wear, like Bootie’s birthday Goldwing—doesn’t she look great? And a good meal—check out our adaptation of Ina Garten’s Baked Farro and Butternut Squash with our “Bootie and Bossy Imperatives for Cooking Sanity”: one pot! And use that whole bag of Farro because what are you going to do with the ½ cup that’s left? Now there’s some good advice. You’re welcome!