Episode 51: Does Knitting Shut Men Out?

It's the Depression--the Great Depression. The economy is in the toilet, and birth rates, marriage rates, divorce rates are down, but guess what's up? Knitting! This is truly the Renaissance period for knitting according to Anne Macdonald in No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting. The National Dry Goods Association estimated that 1/12th of the population knit, or about 10 million people. Between thrifty necessity, clever yarn companies sponsoring contests and stars like Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn taking up the needles on set, "the knitting craze" was the upside to the economic downside of the Depression. But does knitting shut men out? Humorist Ogden Nash devoted some rhymes to the claim that knitting wives left their husbands in a world of bitter silence:

"Life will teach you many things, chief of which is ...