The Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool

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. Whether women knitted codes into fabric or used stereotypes of knitting women as a cover, there’s a…

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