Crafting the Resistance: Knitters Against Nazis
In the past decade or so, knitting has had a huge resurgence as a craft. The internet connected far-flung knitters to each other, a few celebrities picked up needles and yarn, Stitch ‘n’ Bitch was published, and suddenly, knitting was cool.
I’ve been knitting since I pulled a book off the library and stumbled my way through a hideous scarf. I have socks, sweaters, shawls, scarves, cowls, and mittens carefully stored all over my apartment. One shelf of my precious bookshelf is stocked with yarn. I’ve accidentally given myself tennis elbow because I knit for so long. I’m that person who looks at a cute hat in a store too carefully, counting stitches and making notes to recreate it. This is a thing called “reading your knitting” and if you knit enough, you start to figure it out.
Know who were really good at reading stitches? Wartime spies!
Knitting is binary; there are only two stitches: knit and purl. Sure, there are other techniques to fancy up your sweater, but when it comes down to it, the only way to actually make something is to knit or to purl. Makes it super easy to hide morse code messages in, say, a hat. Knitting patterns themselves look so much like a secret code (and really, they are! Once you know the key, you can break it.) that the UK banned all printed knitting patterns out of fear that they were being used to communicate intel.
Don’t want to risk your morse code hat falling into the wrong hands and being deciphered? Take the lead of other agents and intel collectors and use your knitting as a cover. During the World Wars, women were encouraged to knit clothing for soldiers. Knitting was innocuous and ever-present. British secret agent Phyllis Latour Doyle coded messages into silk yarn with knots, so she kept a set of knitting needles with the yarn and no one thought a thing of it. The Belgian Resistance used women who lived near train yards to track enemy movements. And back even farther, during the Revolutionary War, one of Washington’s spies would sit, knit, and make notes on the British, which she’d hide in her ball of yarn.
Want to put some codes in your knitting? Here are just a few options!
This pattern uses color stripes to code. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number (A=1, B=2, etc) and for each letter, you knit the corresponding number of rows in a different color. This same method doesn’t have to be used just for mitts. A scarf would be perfect for a longer message.
This morse code cowl might not be the most inconspicuous pattern, but it gets the job done! The pattern as written says “I wool always love you,” but you can easily adapt and code your own message.
Sources and additional reading:
Atlas Obscura, “The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool”
Elinor Florence, “Knitting for Victory”
