186. Ravels
The Allusionist
Helen Zaltzman
4.7 • 3.8K Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’ve got knitting! We’ve got eponyms!! We’ve got knitting eponyms!!! Which come with a whole load of battles, f-boys, duels, baseball, espionage, scandals - and socks, lots of socks.
Fibre artist and Yarn Stories podcaster Miriam Felton discusses why grafting should ditch the name 'kitchener stitch'; we learn about the eponymous cardigan; and three towns in Ontario take pretty different approaches to having problematic namesakes.
Content note: this episode contains mentions of war, death and injuries.
Get the transcript of this episode, and find out more about the topics therein, at theallusionist.org/ravels.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick of Neutrino Watch and Song By Song podcasts provides the Allusionist music.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zaltzman, have been having an argument since this time last year about whether language is more tender if you brine it. |
| 0:12.0 | In today's episode, we've got Nitti... the language is more tender if you brine it. |
| 0:13.1 | In today's episode, we've got knitting. |
| 0:15.6 | We've got eponyms. |
| 0:17.1 | We've got knitting eponyms, which come with a whole load of battles. |
| 0:21.5 | F-boys, jewels, baseball, scandals, and socks, lots of socks. |
| 0:28.0 | Content warning, there are mentions of war and death on with the show. |
| 0:34.0 | I brought my current knitting project to show you. |
| 0:42.0 | Oh yes, please. My first experiment. I brought my current knitting project to show you. |
| 0:42.8 | Oh yes, please. |
| 0:44.2 | My first experiment with the color work |
| 0:47.4 | beyond like horizontal stripes. |
| 0:49.6 | Oh, I love color work. |
| 0:50.8 | So just hitting this like big long sausage with different patterns that I've improvised. |
| 0:55.6 | Hey! I love it! I am Miriam Felton, also known as Mim on the internet. |
| 1:03.0 | And I am a textile artist and a paper artist, |
| 1:06.7 | primarily textiles, but I'm also a history nerd. |
| 1:09.2 | So I love getting into the deep history of the terminology of the act of making things all sorts of stuff like that. |
| 1:18.0 | Now I think a lot of people would not assume that knitting might be a hotbed of problematic vocabulary, but prove them wrong. |
| 1:27.0 | Well, have I got stories from you? |
| 1:31.0 | Oh! There's actually a big movement in the knitting world and there was some big, big drama and a big old split between the right and the left in the knitting world. |
| 1:49.0 | One of the things that I'm really passionate about changing is the term kitchener. So kitchener stitch is a form of grafting. |
... |
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