I had a lot of fun creating these knitted pieces for the prompt of “Messages”. What immediately came to mind was the way knitting was used during the Second World War to send coded messages.
Knitting as espionage
Women were often underestimated (as they still are) and so raised less suspicion. Many stories highlight female Allied spies who used knitting to record and send data.. One great example is Phyllis Latour Doyle. Phyllis travelled around Nazi-occupied France on a bicycle selling soap and sending coded messages back to Britain. She printed her 2,000 codes on a piece of silk, and used the knitting needles she always carried to insert the coded silk into a flat shoe lace. She then tied her hair up with the shoe lace, giving the impression of a simple young girl. In fact she was an ingenious and incredibly courageous woman executing very dangerous missions.
Another story I love is about how the Belgian resistance recruited older women who lived near train lines. They would sit by their windows knitting while they watched the world go by. From the outside nothing could look more benign. In fact they were knitting coded messages into their sweaters and scarfs; recording the movements of Nazi cargo and personnel trains.
Knitting as skill
I love these stories because I love spy stories generally – the excitement, the intrigue and the courage. But I especially love these particular stories because they shine a light on the pervasiveness and stupidity of underestimating women, especially older women, and the skill and cleverness of their crafts. I was lucky enough to be very close to my maternal grandmother, and to have her as constant presence in my life until I was nearly 40. She was wonderful at all the typical granny stuff – warm, nurturing and a great cook. But she was also clever, resourceful and sharp as a pin, right up until the end. She was funny too and frequently gave a knowing wink that would leave us all giggling. To the outside world she would have been easily underestimated, but to those who knew and loved her she held our absolute respect.
It was my grandmother who taught me to knit. I so miss not having her around to help fix my mistakes or to show off my projects to. She is the one person in my family who would appreciate the skill involved in a lacy pattern, or complex colour work. Knitting is so easily underestimated, and relegated to the domain of feminine domesticity. So these stories of knitting being used by subversive espionage also shine a light on its complexity and on the prowess of those effortlessly proficient at it.
Knitting as code
Knitting is essentially a binary code, made of knit and purl stitches. With just these two basic stitches an almost infinite number of designs are possible – especially when you add yarn colour, fibre choice and human creativity into the mix. Knitting patterns are often written in code, using an array of symbols. They can look very complex and to the novice can seem perplexing. In fact I have read that during WW2 the British and American governments were so worried about the potential for knitting patterns to be used to send coded messages to the enemy that exporting and importing them was banned!
My messages
I drew inspiration for the first piece I created for this Sketchbook prompt from Karen Templer’s Morse Code Cowl. I made a simple stockinette square, with a morse code message incorporated into it. Like Karen, I translated Morse Code as follows: Dot = 1 purl stitch; dash = 3 purl stitches; 1 knit stitch between each dot or dash; 3 knit stitches between letters; and 7 knit stitches between words. The effect is subtle, which I like, and in keeping with a more clandestine feel. The message I chose was “Artists on the Green”, the name of the creative collective taking part in the Sketchbook Circle.
I also did a second piece – again something simple and fun, this time inspired by Steve Plummer’s Heart 2 Heart pattern. I have always wanted to try out shadow knitting, and this felt like the perfect opportunity. Shadow knitting is a technique that creates a visual illusion of an image when viewed from a certain angle. Cleverly combining simple knit and purl stitches in a striped pattern achieves this effect. Viewed straight on it just looks stripey, but from a different angle the image emerges – an important reminder that how we receive a message depends on our point of view!
I enjoyed sharing these little pieces with the group when we met for our Sketchbook Circle. It was gratifying to challenge some preconceptions about knitting and knitters. And it was fun to offer something unexpected. Of course everyone wanted to touch the knitting and feel the coded stitches, adding a tactile layer to the experience (and maybe spreading the urge to squish all yarn in sight!)