What do Knitting and Espionage have in Common?

About this episode

The episode explores the connections between knitting and espionage, inspired by Jenny O’Brien’s novel about women spies in World War II.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Bootie, Bossy

Topics covered

• knitting
• espionage
• World War II
• women's work
• literature
• romance novels

Keywords

• knitting
• espionage
• The Resistance Knitting Club
• World War II
• women spies
• Pippa Latour
• romance novel

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Resistance Knitting Club

Places: British, Seattle, Massachusetts

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