"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?'

I am a Ravelry user but not IG and therefore had no idea that this had been going on. This thread has been so enlightening, I'm urging my DH to read it as whilst he has no interest in knitting he has been subject to an amount of woke-ness at work. So this extends way beyond hobbies and is permiating every day interactions. No one is allowed to disagree or have a healthy debate.

I much prefer knitting without the politics, but I will be off now to spend a few quid with Kate Davies and check out the sock bloke (although I'm not a fan of knitting socks!), and i certainly won't be buying anything from the designer that bullied them. Shame, as she does some beautiful work.

I have Kate's Milarochy Heids book and her pattern Goats of Inversnaid which are both excellent, if anyone needs a recommendation.

FurryMenace - she does some nice little hats. I made an Epistropheid last year and have been meaning to make a peerie next (hard to keep track of a queue since I got rid of my Rav account; need a spreadsheet methinks)

Peerie flooers, that is. Autocorrect does not like Shetland dialect apparently. Racist. Cancelled.

I have been making Kate Davies' owlets jumper for ds2. I had never heard of her before this whole sorry saga brought her to my attention, so I have the sjw bullies to thank for that. She's an utterly brilliant designer and I am so impressed. This is the first jumper I have ever made and it is going to be beautiful.

I was discussing it with a very decent but not particularly woke friend in my craft group the other week. She was on instagram purely to look at pretty pictures of knitting and was at the whole thing and decided she wasn't going to buy anything from anyone who could be as unpleasant to another person as the other Scottish designer was to Kate. I wonder if it has affected her sales.

Has anyone else felt that although it has nothing to do with gender this whole business, together with some of the analysis of it by the Deprogrammed team and others, has given them more insight into the trans debate and the way the people within it operate and spread their ideas?

I also feel it has given me a greater understanding of the whole thing and also reaffirmed my sense of the importance of decency and kindness in activism. No matter which side you are on, once you start insulting, picking on the vulnerable, kicking when people are down, refusing to accept limits on your own behaviour because you are so certain you are right, you are no longer working for good.

No matter which side you are on, once you start insulting, picking on the vulnerable, kicking when people are down, refusing to accept limits on your own behaviour because you are so certain you are right, you are no longer working for good.

Oh yes, very much this. Datun is always a good example of how not to make the political personal to me.

Have read this whole thread and links with this face I am a knitter but one who just does knitting - I had no idea about this. Bonkers, utterly bonkers.

On a lighter note though, someone asked who counted as British indigenous people, and I have the answer:

Ginger people! D'you know what they are? Our aborigines ... that's what! GINGERIGINES! Look at 'em ... they were 'ere first. All this is theirs!
Al Murray, Pub Landlord

So yeah, it’s me and my ginger brethren, basically

It's very interesting, the question of indigenous people. We're all indigenous to some place, or even many places. On the left we are supposed to be more or less pro immigration/freedom of movement. But somehow it doesn't all add up in practice.

It makes sense in places that have been colonised in the relatively recent past - there indigenous people very often are at a disadvantage and have suffered discrimination. But you can’t force it to fit everywhere - all joking aside I really can’t claim to have been disadvantaged by my hair, beyond a couple of miserable years at high school. Although I am half Irish.... perhaps my Irish half should be claiming reparations from my English half for past injustices?

It comes back to the excellent points made earlier - that you can’t force the American situation to fit everywhere, and the attempt to do so is every bit as much cultural imperialism as anything else.

Apologies for resurrecting a thread from a couple of months ago, but it's important to note that Katherine (Katie) Clark aka GeordieKnits is back.

She has appealed her sentence and is now serving it as suspended therefore has returned to social media.

She is going by the name of Gemma Sweep and designing as Chimney Sweep Designs. @ chimneysweepdesigns on insta

instagram.com/chimneysweepdesigns?igshid=r7q5j1rs4kxr

Ffs - the reason I love crafting is because it's calm and gentle and the people are lovely! I do not want this politicised shit taking over what is a peaceful, good natured community of folk making pretty things!!

Just bumping up this slightly zombie thread because it's all going off again in the yarn world this week. A second HP knitting book has been released and people are not happy. There's a lot of very similar statements on insta and it feels like every maker/dyer/designer is trying very hard to distance themselves from the author and the book.

Thank you ForgotAboutThis. I’ll look it up, I loved the Harry Potter knitting book!

Every time this happens I trawl Facebook to see if my favourite dyers are putting the boot it. No sign of it on FB thank goodness! Off to look at the book now

I hear about all these squabbles about HP and then on FB I see posts pop up about how to hold a HP birthday party, how the HP studios are booked out for the summer, the HP cakes and clothes at the supermarket. And I think what a little echo chamber some people live in because in the real world JKR can't be short of royalties still rolling in

@ForgotAboutThis

Just bumping up this slightly zombie thread because it's all going off again in the yarn world this week. A second HP knitting book has been released and people are not happy. There's a lot of very similar statements on insta and it feels like every maker/dyer/designer is trying very hard to distance themselves from the author and the book.

Including the actual author of the book??!

It is such a nasty, bullying world in places, the world of knitting. I have a few designers that I have seen be so awful to others over 'woke' issues that however talented they are I won't buy their books new - I wait till I see a secondhand copy.

Obviously there are many different people with many different views amongst knitters but the headline discussion has been almost completely taken over by the loud, shouty, useful, no actual help to anyone, virtue signallers.

There is a Harry Potter crotchet book coming too

With my apologies to you, OP, as you seem a nice, sensible person - this thread is without a doubt the most insane thing I have ever read on MN.

I a little experience in knitting, crocheting, sewing or embroidery and would love to learn more but the posts on this thread have put me off these skills for life.

I have a little not I a little.

Well, how VERY dare Tanis Grey put out another official Harry Potter-themed pattern book!

www.ravelry.com/discuss/stalkerhaus/4122810/51-75#51

I don't know if anyone here will be able to view this link unless you're already on Ravelry (I am) but jeez, the witch-burning and pitchforks are strong here. Indie dyers (that will mean zilch unless you buy and hoard absurdly expensive knitting yarn but they can have huge followings) are tainted by association, by allowing their yarns to be used in this book ... One such dyer seems to be caught in a cleft stick, by 'denouncing' JKR but supporting Tanis Grey by allowing her dyed yarn to be used in one of the patterns ... (and as the author of this post points out, this dyer is a POC so this presents the author with a moral dilemma, which she articulates thus: "don’t wanna cancel one of the few Black women dyers and her comments make it sound like she does understand that participating in the book wasn’t a good look for her but still.")

And someone on that discussion says that yeah, it's been suggested that "we should be nice to tanis because two people she knows recently died. I’m guessing they didn’t die of anti-trans violence though." Nice.

Let me make it clear - I am a fairly geeky knitter and yarn hoarder but these are NOT my people! Rav has been batshit crazy for years, it's woke as all hell and some people really do seem to have had a brain bypass.

I never knew there was a knitting community. I thought knitting was something you do at home in front of the telly.

The link doesn’t work for those of us outside the community. Ravelry is a free website for knitters, crocheters, and fiber artists
I misread that as artists that fib.

Look for @tanisknits on Instagram.

I don't use Ravelry so that link takes you to the log in page. Wow, just wow! It just shouts welcome to the woke world of queer. Cartoon people in dog masks, bondage, waving trans flags, polyamory, etc ad nauseum. You'd think it was a dating site not a craft site.

Enuff to make the average knitter run a mile!

Cartoon people in dog masks, bondage, waving trans flags, polyamory, etc ad nauseum.

I'm going to assume you're joking and never click the link to have that illusion shattered.

I'm a knitter, I love knitting. Used to be quite heavily involved online until the madness kicked off, it's what woke me up to madness. There are some dreadful bullies in the knitting community, people I admired as great designers who's behaviour disgusts me. Anyway I'm off to look up the Harry Potter book .. didn't know it was out.