ARMY&ME
IN TIME needed some bed socks because it was cold in the desert at night. They were sent out and by return of post [the project] got 40 other requests. Now they knit the items, take them down to the depot and they get shipped out. It went to naval people originally because some of those serving during the first Iraq war had been at sea for longer than Nelson’s navy and hadn’t been home for three years.
Is knitting something Army families could try their hands at? It’s a very easy thing to get into. YouTube is a wonderful place! You just pop in what you’re after and you will get all sorts of guides. You can even learn how to knit if you’re left-handed.
What about for the soldiers themselves? In the back of my book there’s a piece about a radio operator based just outside of Kandahar who was sat there really bored and he was whizzing around YouTube when he found a video about crochet. He taught himself to crochet while he was waiting for messages to come in! There’s a
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lovely picture of him holding this huge blanket up and he said that he got to the point where he was waiting for parcels from his sister because that’s where all the yarn was coming from. It can also be used for therapy – there’s lots of research into mental illness and knitting and how good it can be for you.
Is it an expensive hobby? It can be cheap if you hunt around to buy the yarn, but it can also be quite expensive! If you want something nice, fluffy and comforting then it costs a bit more. I normally knit with 100 per cent wool and try and stick to British sources. We have more than 70 breeds of sheep in the British Isles. I use Shetland a lot.
What are some of the more obscure military-inspired knitted items? In the Great War, rifle covers and covers for the trigger area so they didn’t get wet. There’s a specific pattern for those. There were also lots of military hospital comforts like stump warmers for the amputees and splint covers – when you break your femur and have your leg up in the metal contraption, there’s a knitted
cover for it. The most useless item on God’s earth was a knitted sling. Because knitting stretches as the day goes on, they weren’t very useful at all! A lot of it was utilitarian things like socks, up-and-over jumpers, balaclavas and “cap mufflers”, which were all hand-knitted. n l For more information about Joyce, including her demonstrations, visit her website at www.thehistoricknit.co.uk Knitskrieg: A Call to Yarns is out now priced £18.99 and is published by Uniform, an imprint of Unicorn Publishing Group. Army&You readers can purchase a copy direct from the publisher for £15, including P&P, by sending a cheque made payable to “Unicorn Publishing Group” to Acorn House, Tonbridge Road, Bough Beech, Kent TN8 7AU.
WIN!
YOUR OWN COPY OF KNITSKRIEG We have teamed up with Uniform to offer three readers the chance to win a copy of Knitskrieg. For your chance to win, tell us when the first military knitting pattern was produced. To enter, visit the giveaways page at www. armyandyou.co.uk For more information, see page three.
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