How Knitting Helps Everyone

Let's go back about 85 years. It's November, 1941, and America is about to enter World War II, when once again we will discover that we are a cold-footed, sockless nation. We have been here before. Think Revolutionary War, then the Civil War, and then World War I. But coming out of the Depression when there was not much money, we have evolved. We are now a nation of knitters--10 million knitters strong according to estimates from the National Dry Goods Association. So when the men pick up their guns, women pick up their needles once again, according to Anne Macdonald in No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting. What's different? This time we have more music to knit by, like Glenn Miller's "Knit One, Purl Two" (you can ask Alexa to play it for you). Emily Post also decides on some rules of etiquette for knitting in  ...