How Stupid Can Really Pay Off!

Carol Posted on August 11 2019

No this is not all about ME but....

I just finished a great book by Jason Fagone called "The Woman that Smashed Codes". It's a great true story about code breaking during WWI. The book doesn't primarily focus on the prejudices of men towards women during that era but it's there. So I was drawn to this news story called, "Grandma's knitting a sweater or maybe not!"

Here is the gist of the story: DURING WORLD WAR I, a grandmother in Belgium knitted at her window, watching the passing trains. As one train chugged by, she made a bumpy stitch in the fabric with her two needles. Another passed, and she dropped a stitch from the fabric, making an intentional hole. Later, she would risk her life by handing the fabric to a soldier—a fellow spy in the Belgian resistance, working to defeat the occupying German force.

Holes meant trains of soldiers and bumps meant armory. Thus tracking the German's movement and build up. So simple yet so brilliant. It turns out that this knit coding can actually be tracked back to the Civil War. So there, woman aren't as dumb and useless as they think! Ha!

A World War One poster to promote knitting for soldiers.

So Carol Ann what does this have to do with you? Well, thank you for asking. It turns out that this whole Jewelry side hustle started out with my teaching myself to knit but I couldn't stand to read patterns and moved to crocheting which is faster and more freeing. From crocheting with wire I developed the Twisted Sister. So now you know!

New Twisted Sisters: