Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself,

associate editor Toby Young and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by

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Welcome to the quilette podcast. patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter.

Welcome to the Quillett podcast.

I'm Quillett's Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

When we think of the arenas in which today's culture wars play out,

the kind and gentle world of knitting is not the first image that comes to mind.

And yet, as Scottish writer Catherine Jebson Moore has been documenting this year for Colette, knitters seem to be just as vulnerable

to social justice mobings as anyone else.

For the victims, the stakes are surprisingly high.

In some cases, prominent knitting designers have even had to shut their social media accounts, which often serve as their most important marketing tools. For listeners who, like me, have no connection to the knitting world, this all may sound like the

fictional premise to a Christopher Guest movie like Best in Show or A Mighty Wind.

So to learn more, I spoke to Catherine Jibson more about her articles and what she's learned about the people who have turned such an unlikely

hobby into a venue for hate and hysteria.

Catherine, how did you first get exposed to this, to my mind, crazy Instagram world of not only people

who love knitting but who are strangely political about knitting.

I have knitted nearly all my life. I really started knitting again when I had my first child

about 12 years ago and so I've been on Instagram for a few years I

...