"Cast Off - Diversity wars are raging in the knitting world'

[AncientLights]

I've kept the title from the article in the print version of The Spectator 28 Sept, as I can't improve on it.

It's the most astonishing piece - well, astonishing and yet horribly familiar to us here. I'll summarise as it's not the done thing to do a big c&p job and would also be a kick in the financial teeth of the Speccy, who have done so much, via James Kirkup, to publicise the illogicality of the trans movement.

There is a knitter called Nathan Taylor whose online name is 'Sockmatician' - he sounds an interesting character, shall I say. Sockmatician seems to have cause huge offence (and here I will quote as it's so bonkers) by posting 'a poem on Instagram about 'diversknitty' in which he boasted it was a year since he had founded this hashtag, and asked that people use it kindly, rather than attacking one another'. Seems Taylor was committing violence against Bipoc (black & indigenous people of colour, it says here) by telling them how to make their arguments about inclusion, tone policing from a white man - utterly unacceptable.

The war started & raged on. Sockmatation has MH problems, was hospitalised, messages from his husband held no sway. Things got really bad with the yarn festival: yarn producers & other knitting personalities (who knew?) couldn't believe Sockmatition hadn't been uninvited, someone was glad she hadn't been able to attend after all as she'd have been unable to teach her session knowing he was down the hall. Unsupported allegations online about an assault. His patterns have been dropped from two books, one of which was the first official Harry Potter knitting book - the cover was reshot to remove Sockmatition's work. His business has suffered a 75% drop in sales.

There's a similar story about a Kate Davies who is based in the Scottish Highlands. She wouldn't join in denouncing people for their 'transgressions', so she's been attacked, too.

I read it thinking it must be an allegory but have come to the conclusion it's genuine. It is total, stark-staring madness and I can only keep saying to myself and to anyone else who will listen 'How on earth have we come to this?'

Is it okay for an English fashion designer to use traditional Scottish tartans in a collection?

Is it okay for a black fashion designer to use Maasai inspired textiles in a collection if they have no Maasai heritage?

I can't speak for Maasai people but as a Scot if you want to use tartan I say have at it.

Sharing culture isn't mockery to me. People putting on fake accents is mockery. Stereotypes about drunkenness or violent tendencies is mockery. Choosing tartan for a clothing range? No, not mockery, just appreciation for a fabric style.

If you're talking about fabrics, I believe there was a baby wearing witch hunt about an Aztec design. Someone involved might post something relevant?
I avoided the baby wearers after realising how affluent and middle class they were. They really fetishised carrying a baby, rather than doing it so they could get on with the housework.

And going back to the knitting thing- yes, there's definitely work to be done with regards to diversity, especially in knitting magazines and it's completely valid to raise that and show there is a demand for it. I wonder if some publishers are behind the times when it comes to how the popularity of knitting and crochet has grown among younger people thanks to the internet and social media- there's been a demographic shift in who does it.

Terfsandwich keeps bringing up the lack of class analysis and she is bang on. Knitting and crocheting are some of the few crafting hobbies accessible to people without a lot of money- you can get needles and hooks for next to nothing second hand, yarn can be very cheap depending on the type you buy, and you can download patterns for nothing. How many 'ordinary' hobby knitters/ crocheters, who aren't up to their eyeballs in interminable woke wars on social media are being put off participating in online craft communities because of this stuff?

This is what cultural appropriation of tartan looks like.

Surely in that case, terf, it is the fetishisation rather than the fabric that's the issue.

Baby 'wearing' wasn't a 'thing' when I had mine, though slings for carrying babies were available. Good thing too as my daughter was born at the start of a particularly hard winter and you can't really push a pram through knee deep snow. But to me that's just a practical choice. One that perhaps hasn't been associated with the western world of recent times (surely we must have done so in the past though), but the idea that it is cultural appropriation and somehow 'wrong' is alien to me.

No Arnold there was a particular incident where a Swedish (I think) small business owner got keel hauled over some design.

Apart from that I totally agree with you about the community. It was all about having this wrap or that wrap (which cost hundreds of dollars) and were authentically woven by women peasants in South America. They kept going on and on about collecting them, and how they couldn't resist buying more. It gobsmacked me as I had assumed they were thrifty hippies. But no. The snobbery over buckle carriers was immense. Surely, I thought, buckle carriers are an ultimate combination of technology and tradition? Apparently not.

I always think about cultural appropriation and smile when I see haggis pakoras in the supermarket and, more to my taste, cardamom tablet.
The success of Nigerian Americans and Jamaican Americans definitely poses questions about race being more of an issue than culture or class. I'm not saying they never experience racism but they seem to have cultural or economic mechanisms available to them that stops racism holding them back to a certain extent. It is most definitely something that can't be boiled down to a simple set of tenets.

I've got a well known book about Highland folk tradition with illustrations of agricultural workers with babies strapped on with shawls, what on earth do people think peasant women here did...

No Arnold there was a particular incident where a Swedish (I think) small business owner got keel hauled over some design.

This is the side of things I just don't 'get'. We have been spreading and appreciating designs across the globe for thousands of years to the benefit of all. Why, all of a sudden, is this a bad thing?

It was Didymos ref the wraps. I’ve been having a read, have a google it’s more of the same OTT stuff!!!
I agree, the whole baby wearing thing was so competitive and there was this “well I suppose it’s okay to use a buckled carrier if you must but they are for plebs really...wraps are far superior” attitude.
There was also competitive toddler-wearing and muchos points to be gained by wearing a 5 year old which you can in the Tula. Altho it is a buckle so points subtracted for that...

I remember Facebook baby wearing communities being really weird when my first child was a newborn. She wouldn't sleep unless she was held or breastfed, so having a sling actually allowed me to claw some modicum of a life back and stopped me from going completely insane. All I wanted was practical tips on baby wearing equipment which was comfy, safe and easy to use but a lot of the groups seemed to be extremely competitive and based around being an affluent 'earth mother' type- constant discussions of eyewateringly expensive lengths of fabric.
Some to think of it, the whole babywearing thing seemed to be vastly more expensive then it needed to be for what are mainly just big strips of cotton.

The Singh Sisters did a fascinating exhibition of how the cultures and production of textiles crossed over. It wasn’t rose-tinted either, woven into all the pieces were very powerful messages about British Imperialism.
If we all ‘stay in our lane’ then we’re culturally the poorer for it imo.
This also highlight the ludicrous attacks on KD. She was very much ‘staying in her lane’ with her books, but that was wrong? You can spend hours and hours online trying to track down the incendiary racist comment a designer has made, or an example of how they have deliberately excluded a section of society, when the simple fact is there was never such an incident.
It’s like calling me homophobic because I’ve never knit anything designed by Sockmatician, when the truth is, it’s just not my style of knitting.
He’s now being accused of gaslighting. There are trigger warnings on posts about his epic YouTube post for it ffs.

This also highlight the ludicrous attacks on KD. She was very much ‘staying in her lane’ with her books, but that was wrong?

You can't win, even if you've literally done nothing wrong- you have to be performatively woke to have a chance of surviving. I feel sorry for her and the Sockmatician fella.

Most knitters and crocheters don't give a shit WHO created the pattern- they'll just download what they want. I crochet and I have no idea of the ethnicity of the pattern makers- I'll just search on Pinterest or Ravelry and choose the nicest one. The Ravelry declaration on the banning of Trump supporters really surprised me because surely half their US userbase vote Republican/ Trump. Alienating half your customers by needlessly taking a political stance on a hobby site it fucking bizarre.

Wigglybeezer - yes, I've got photos of my grandmother carrying my mother as a small baby in a tartan rug/shawl tied around her. This was in Scotland in the mid-1920s.

You can't win, even if you've literally done nothing wrong

The game is arranged so you've lost from the outset.

In some ways it can be harder to defend yourself if you're innocent. See Kafka's The Trial for example.

Being repeatedly asked to prove you haven't done something terrible will imply to large numbers of casual observers that you must have done something to deserve it.

Re babywearing history, it was the norm in early modern Europe. I am in a group that does Tudor reenactment and someone in the Facebook group queried it a while back, at which the people who had researched it immediately posted a succession of contemporary images showing babies being carried either tied on directly or strapped to parents' backs in baskets. It's one of those things there is lots of evidence for once you start looking.

I watched the whole of the Sockmatician video, his acting background means he is a good communicator, very clear. The unfolding story was compelling and seemed to me very honest and even handed, enough to make me watch the whole hour and twenty plus minutes of it, I actually recommend it, which I wouldn't if it was just whinging.

Yes there's absolutely no doubt that Sockmatician's narrative is genuine. Actor or not, his distress is palpable. Gaslighting it is not.

But what a story, what a drama! It really is a tale of our times.

wigglybeezer whoa, back up, what supermarket has cardamom tablet? A guy I worked with brought some in his mother had made and it was possibly even better than plain tablet.

I wonder what will happen now? I'm a bit dubious about men in knitwear design anyway as I think they get fawned over a lot in a way that wouldn't happen if a women produced the same patterns but there's room for all sorts.

A guy I worked with brought some in his mother had made and it was possibly even better than plain tablet

My daughter works in Glasgow city centre and there is a tablet man that goes around several of the companies there. After Eight tablet, cardamom tablet, and (my personal favourite) Bailey's tablet are all on the menu. I may be somewhat jealous.

Back on topic, I am gobsmacked at the idea of a knitting community banning Trump supporters. Surely to goodness if you don't wish your community to be disrupted by politics you just ban politics talk. The world has truly gone mad.

Actually I make my own cardamom tablet, to be accurate white chocolate and cardamom tablet, I just left that bit out to avoid being long winded, it's a Sue Lawrence recipe my mother passed on to me, it's divine.

Any chance of that recipe Wiggly ?

I have been musing further on this: has it occurred to others that the concept of toxic whiteness is analogous to the concept of toxic maleness, ie. It's an idea that has has actually inflamed argument, increased division, and reduced impartiality. It's now hard to talk about specific problematic male behaviour with men due to talk of toxic maleness (leading to whataboutery etc), toxic whiteness/white fragility as an idea is making objective discussion about race difficult. It's actually providing ammo to extremists, which is unfortunate, because there is something there to be talked about in both cases.
From my rabbit hole research into the Ravelry issue there was at least an element of snobbery involved in the Trump ban, I didn't archive it but I came across a screenshot of someone saying something along the lines of the Trump ban having the bonus effect of removing some of the acrylic afghan fans from the site.