Why care about craft terminology?

Georgia (00:00): To give you an idea of the kind of like craft orientated teenager I was–

Adam (00:03): That in a way creates a further barrier for new people coming into the craft.

Adam (00:07): Is this like the People's Front of Judea and the People's Popular Front of Judea?

Adam (00:16): Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Yarn Library, with me, Adam Cleevely–

Georgia (00:21): And me, Georgia Denham at Tulipurl on Instagram. Well, it's gonna take me some time to get used to this.

Adam (00:26): George is now absolutely famous.

Georgia (00:28): I still don't have as many followers as you! Honestly, whirlwind, whirlwind.

Adam (00:33): Give it to me at the of the week. Yes, you can find me on Instagram, CleevelyKnits. And Georgia is Tulipurl.

Georgia (00:39): Yeah, a little elision between the Ps.

Adam (00:42): Thank you very much for joining us here in the podcast. So this episode is going to be looking at much more detail about craft and terms for craft and how we think about the terms for craft. And in particular, this is in a response partly to Game of Wool, I suppose, because there were two big controversies on Game of Wool. One was about steeking and one was about what is called Fair Isle and what is colourwork. And I think we want to dig into both of those. And Georgia, you've got examples as well of, other crafts where we need to be careful about the language. I'm in response to this also wearing a jumper that I have composed myself, which often people come up to me and say, is that an Aran jumper? And I say, I'm sorry for those of you listeners that can't see it, but if you head to my Instagram (CleevelyKnits, 2025), any picture you find of me wearing a cable knitted jumper.

Georgia (01:30): And just to describe for anyone who can't see it, it's a light, light gray, gorgeous, slightly marled color with really intricate cabling all around the whole body.

Adam (01:40): It is as many cables as you can get onto a jumper. There are 3,900 cable crossings on it, which is a lot, but it is not an Aran jumper. When I made this jumper, I read a couple of books, particularly by Alice Starmore (Starmore, 1997), because I wanted to understand about cabling and cable jumpers. But although I read the book on Aran jumpers, this is not an Aran jumper because I wanted to knit it top down in the round, and that is not it. Anyway, so with the full declaration that I am not wearing an Aran jumper, shall we talk about cutting your knitting, or is it sometimes called, steeking?

Georgia (02:14): So in that first episode of the Game of Wool, Gordon was cast off and he was the only person who in the, as was referred to, the "Fair Isle Knitting Challenge", the only person to actually use what was also described as steeking. Now, it transpired that there are all kinds of issues with the terminology that was used to talk about the steeking, to talk about particularly the designs on Fair Isle garments and also just by nature of the type of wool that was used for this. So traditionally Fair Isle knitting would never be done in chunky yarn. And when you talk to experts on Fair Isle and you talk to experts in Shetland, there are specific parameters around this. And that's not what we saw in the show. And yet those terms were used for that. And you might think, "Ah, it's just knitting. Why does it matter?" But the thing is that craft in so many different ways – it's not specific to Shetland knitting in this case – craft is often a real anchor of culture for so many different people around the world and often in communities that are marginalized and often in communities that are underrepresented and whose history is poorly recorded in many places. And craft is a way of passing down terminology, passing down words. And really, I mean, I could say all of this, but I think it said best in a really wonderful letter (ShetlandStitchClub, 2025) that I'd like to read out that was from the Shetland Stitch Club. You might have seen this already, but they were kind enough to send us a copy.

Adam (03:51): It's worth adding that quite a few people were outraged or upset to some extent and to different extents as well about the use of terminology. And although we're going to read out one letter, we've seen lots of examples online. There have also been interviews given on the radio to BBC Scotland, think, or BBC Shetland. I'm sorry that I've lost track.

Georgia (04:08): MPs as well, members of Scottish Parliament, writing–

Adam (04:12): So far we haven't seen a response from Channel 4 or from the Game of Wool or from the production company Hello Halo Productions.

Georgia (04:20): So the letter is dated from the 6th of November. I'm not going to read the whole letter just for the sake of time, but–

Dear Channel 4, I'm writing to you from Shetland (not "The Shetlands", but more on that later), where my makkin pals and I were all so excited to see the first episode of Game of Wool. What an exciting prospect it was to have knitting elevated to primetime Sunday night viewing. The group chat was popping off. But how we were disappointed.

Not because we didn't like the knitting (that was the least of our worries), but because of the blatant disregard for a longstanding tradition that has been part of the culture of these islands for so long.

First, those tank tops were not Fair Isle. Fair Isle is worked two strands at a time, two colours per row with short floats, symmetrical motifs, and a careful blending of colours to create gradients. It is done with Shetland wool from native Shetland sheep, a fibre so brilliant that it gave rise to this long tradition. The natural variation in color of the fleece lends itself brilliantly to colourwork. And its natural crimp means the fibers cling and felt together, creating a patterned fabric, every bit as dense and strong [as] something made in one yarn. The Fair Isle tradition came about because of these sheep, and this yarn. So what did your contestants use? Well, we don't know, because you never told us.

The super chunky yarn your knitters were made to use was problematic. Of course, chunky yarn knits up quicker and you had them working to a strict time limit, but why not set a brief for something smaller and more authentic? Those loosely spun fibers are destined to pill like mad, and with wear the tank tops would soon degrade to a shapeless nothing. Traditional Fair Isle is made with Shetland two-ply, a much finer grade of yarn, which holds its shape year after year and makes heirloom garments that can be passed down through generations. And Shetland two-ply is also fine and strong enough to support a steek, another feature of traditional fair isle, whereas a chunky yarn in any other fibre will need to be reinforced with sewing or crochet. This not only added to poor Gordon's problems. According to a video that he's since posted on Instagram, he was struggling not because of his decision to steek, which is in fact a time-saving measure in Fair Isle, but because he was forced to modify the super chunky needles supplied into something resembling a traditional DPN, then made a mistake with his colourwork and had to pull back a number of rows. But the final edit didn't show us that. Instead, you just unhelpfully reinforced the myth that stinking is risky and put novice knitters off.

Georgia (06:59): I'm just going to skip ahead a little bit to find a section that's specifically talking about the language.

And while we're here, please don't use "peerie" as a noun. It's an adjective meaning small. If that sounds pedantic, consider this. Shetlean was only given official language status LAST MONTH. Spend some time here and you'll quickly realise that Shetlean is completely distinct from English and totally unique to these islands. It's a language descended from Norn, the language of ancient Norsemen, from which modern Danish and Norwegian also derive. Advocate organisation, I Hear Dee would be able to tell you more about it. Native speakers have been battling for language status, and to pillage and appropriate its words in an attempt to lend some heritage appeal feels misjudged. Nobody ever talks about "peeries" – "peerie patterns" patterns maybe, but just "peeries"? Absolutely not.

Same for "a Fair Isle" or even "a Fair Isle, but as a tank top". Fair Isle is a place, or an adjective to describe a style of knitting. You can make Fair Isle ganseys, hats, gloves, socks, jerkins, whatever. Saying "a Fair Isle" does not make sense to us.

Georgia (08:07): So, I would really strongly recommend going and having a read of this incredible letter. It really dives into specifics that I, to be honest, don't feel well placed to talk on because it's laid out here. And by the sounds of the letter, the letter also discusses is the fact that the show, the producers involved in Game of Wool did go to Shetland and they met with experts in Fair Isle and the local museum there even filmed videos for the show to use that talked about specific things, and basically, I didn't fit the program and they also didn't tell them.

Adam (08:42): And that's the most disappointing thing for me, I suppose, about the whole saga is that it appears that it wasn't just that Game of Wool as a production organisation missed it out. They actually went and they did the work and they did make sure that they were doing something and then someone somewhere in production just cut it. And that for me is just awful. I mean, that's why you need and knitter or a crafter with you, you know, with experience through that production phase, but that was deeply disappointing and this letter is well worth reading for those that want to understand it more.

Georgia (09:16): It goes back to what we were saying before about the distinctions between crochet and knitting in the last episode that actually they have a responsibility to represent these crafts and to represent them accurately. And if you've literally had conversations with the experts on this, how, how on earth do you not circle back and check unless you kind of know that what you're doing isn't right and you're just hoping that it'll you know, it'll just come out in the wash.

Adam (09:48): And personally as well, you I am so hungry to learn more about knitting. And when the term "peerie" came up, I genuinely thought, brilliant, a new word for me. And I stored it in my brain immediately that that was what I was meant to call those little extra bits. So a hundred percent, like I was misinformed by that. And I know I'm grateful for this lesson, this point of correction, because I now know that "peeries" is not the right term.

Georgia (10:17): That's a really great point because it's exactly something that I was thinking at the time as well because it's been a plan of mine for a while. This isn't spoilers because he knows about it, but I really want to knit a jumper for my husband that prior to this whole kind of situation coming out, I'm literally research craft. I'm very much on the side of wanting to preserve terminology around things. But I'm so used to people calling this style of different patterns and different images and colours and the two strands. I knew the thing about being two colours on one row and that kind of stranded colourwork, but I've been thinking, yeah, I really want to knit "a Fair Isle style jumper". I mean, at least I was saying Fair Isle style, a Fair Isle style jumper where I, you know, and I'm sorry, this is in hindsight, feels almost like borderline offensive. But my husband's a mathematician, a computer scientist, and I wanted to do it with like things about his research. So like cute little lambdas and things like that. So kind of in a similar nature to the task that they had, which was to tell a narrative, tell their own story. Now, when I heard "peerie", I also thought, that's the word for the little computers that I wanted to put on this jumper. I'm so glad that this has come up because that's not a word I'm going to use for this necessarily. Or you know, certainly the whole adjective noun thing and the use of it, it just demonstrates to us and why I really, really recommend going and reading the whole letter. It demonstrates actually why this is incredibly important and how it goes beyond craft itself. It goes into language, heritage, culture, communities histories and I put out a video the last couple of days and I talked briefly and just mentioned that often craft history is representative of marginalized communities who otherwise have not been represented in traditional history or traditional academia, traditional research. And all of that is coming home to roost in a really horrible way.

Adam (12:07): So it was interesting for me as well because I wanted to go and do some background research on the production company itself and to understand what other kind of TV shows they've produced. Because I was interested in is this a one-off faux pas that they've made and largely this seems to be first public evidence that I can find of a foray into something where there is likely to be difficulties in terminology, lot of their other programs are nature programs and so on. Absolutely, where their documentary style but not the kind of language type problems or the detailed research type problems that you're presented with with knitting.

Georgia (12:43): When we're thinking about terminology, like you say, it's maybe the first time that they've encountered something where this is so important. But one of the reasons that terminology is so important is because words communicate meaning. This is getting very like, I'm going for my RE (Religious Education) A level and Wittgenstein word games. But terminology words are really important to communicate meaning. And you know, when we talked about learning skills and the twister stitch thing, all that kind of stuff, when you don't have a word for something, you don't have vocabulary. You can't communicate meaning precisely. And then sometimes they move into a sort of a more of a tacit understanding of knowledge where you're kind of learning through doing, learning through seeing someone else making. But when you have this precise terminology around craft practices, that's what allows us to pass things on and to talk about it. And when those words are appropriated, when they're used in different contexts, when they're not used accurately, those words and that meaning, gets really, really blurry, very, very muddy. There's an amazing paper that I would really, really recommend. I believe it is open access. It's a paper from TEXTILE, Cloth and Culture is the journal. It's by Martha Glazzard, Claire Adholla, and Tonya Kim Dewey-Findell. It's a beautiful, beautiful read. It's called Knit is a Four Letter Word (Glazzard, Adholla, Dewey-Findell, 2023). And it talks all about how the basic nature of the language used in knitting is so commonplace that it's so entrenched in our language at large. I'm kind of almost quoting exactly from this, that knitting as a field of research or knitting is a defined thing, struggles to be recognized or struggles to collate into one identity because this knitting is so overlapping.

Adam (14:27): I think it's also a really big problem though, Georgia, where you have a field like this, and particularly you have a craft like knitting, which is perceived to be old fashioned. It struggles to shrug off its image of only being done by older people. And then when you overlay that with the burden of, well the language can't change and this is how it's been done for hundreds of years, that in a way creates a further barrier for new people coming into the craft. I think that if you want to make knitting new and inviting, that's challenging if you need to–

Georgia (15:02): But do you say that to doctors when they need the specific terminology to refer to parts of the body or diseases or treatments? When you're coming into something like if you're learning about the body and you say, kneecap or elbow, you have different versions of things. But we need specific terminology to describe things. And it's something that happens a lot in artistic disciplines and creative disciplines, craft, where we have to somehow use this open and accessible terminology and actually what that's doing is it's degrading the meaning and the identity of things. This whole argument in this debate gets tied up with a lot of culture wars as well. There's a great article that I'll link to that talks about the difficulties faced by heritage crafts if they are too tangled up with culture wars.

Adam (15:51): The the example of a doctor and medicine to say they are permitted to have a separate language by culture at large because we understand that a doctor wants to talk about a sagittal section. We understood exactly what they mean and we permit that because it is a, perhaps because it's a science, because it's educated in a formal process and we can all see the need. Whereas craft, because it's approachable and because it is more accessible by all, we don't apply the same standards of, well, there is a set of formal language that you need to refer to.

Georgia (16:25): In medicine owe recognize the essentialism of that language and that isn't done so much in craft and arts and you know I look at how craft ideas could help other disciplines that's my research specifically in music I'm trying to create a way that you could apply these kind of craft ideas to music and one of the ways that this is important in the research I'm doing is actually advocating for an increased tangible and material awareness around composition practice where people are actually using words to describe things and reflecting on their physical processes of making, of writing music, so that they can articulate things and they can share ideas and they can teach people better. Because if you depart yourself from the specific language that you need to describe specialist skills, then the crafts or the making practices – composition and music in my case – it collapses in on itself and you're left with a really vague, broad artistic practice. And then that's when things don't survive. So the article that I was thinking of is How Nationalist Nostalgia for Heritage Crafts is Fueling Britain's Culture Wars by Daniel Carpenter, from 2022, a couple of years ago (Carpenter, 2022). I believe it is behind the paywall for the Craft Council membership, but if you're really into crafts, I mean, at some point I definitely want to talk about recommending Crafts (Crafts Council) as a magazine and a subscription. It's really, really brilliant. So yeah, I highly recommend having a look at that article.

Georgia (17:56): Just to kind of circle it around. So I've mentioned the Craft Council in relation to that magazine, but there's actually also Heritage Crafts, which used to be called the, I believe the Heritage Crafts Association, Heritage Crafts and also Craft Council, right? They are two separate organizations. And I feel like this is an interesting thing that kind of plays into this conversation. So the Craft Council, or Crafts Council was again, it had a slightly different name, I think was the Crafts Advisory Committee was established in 1971, I think was the first meeting. And then over those couple of years, it became Craft Council. The Craft Council was set up for sort of the preservation and the celebration of craft work. Now, Heritage Crafts, formerly Heritage Crafts Association, you might think, oh, well, that sounds older. Like that would be set up before Craft Council.

Adam (18:42): Right, I mean, heritage is an older word to start with.

Georgia (18:45): Yeah, exactly. So actually Heritage Crafts was set up in 2010 as a response to the fact that maybe Craft Council was not necessarily doing enough. I don't want to like stir beef here, but from my understanding...

Adam (18:57): Can I, just as a quick segue, is this like the People's Front of Judea and the People's Popular Front of Judea?

Georgia (19:01): Wait, what?

Adam (19:03): How do you know that we're from different age groups? Sorry, that's a Monty Python reference.

Georgia (19:09): Oh, I did mean to ask you about the 80s challenge because I'm not actually sure. Were you alive in the 80s?

Adam (19:13): Oh my goodness.

Georgia (19:15): I wasn't. Anyway.

Adam (19:18): I was. Almost all of it.

Georgia (19:20): So Craft Council and Heritage Crafts, different things. Heritage Crafts, I'm going to focus in on them right now because we've had a letter from Shetland Stitch Club, we've had Gordon's video. If this is of interest to you and this kind of goes beyond just knitting and into crafts more generally. If this is kind of your bag or up your street, I would really recommend going to look at Heritage Crafts website in the UK. So they do a lot of really amazing work to preserve and champion Heritage Crafts.

Adam (19:52): I'm super excited right now because George has just pulled up a web page called The Red List of Endangered Crafts (Heritage Crafts, 2025). I'm expecting to see some really niche crafts on here. Can we scroll down and see it?

Georgia (20:03): Yeah, so basically they have a list and it was first published in 2017 and it is following a four-tier system that is drawing on the conservation status system used by the International Union of Conservation of Nature Red List and the Rare Breed Survival Trust Watch List. Heritage Crafts uses a system of four categories of risk to assess the viability of heritage crafts. A heritage craft is considered to be viable if there are sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation.

Adam (20:39): And those four categories as as in biology they are extinct or critically endangered or endangered.

Georgia (20:46): Yeah. And so then you go into this list and then they have links like web pages that then link to specific information about the crafts in this list.

Adam (20:56): Show me Extinct.

Georgia (20:58): So Extinct in the UK. So these are locally extinct and they're no longer practised in the UK, right? So that could mean that they're practised elsewhere, but they are extinct in the UK. Cricket ball making (hand stitched), gold beating, lacrosse stick making, mould and deckle making, mouth blown sheet glass making. So it's pretty specific–

Adam (21:23): I'm aware that cricket balls are now made by hand still done in India. It still exists in the world, but it's extinct in the UK.

Georgia (21:29): Now you might think like, that's a bit of a silly list. Now, when you go to the critically endangered list, then you start to get a little bit more panicked. These are things that are critically endangered and they are at serious, I'm getting goosebumps, serious risk of no longer being practised in the UK. I'm getting emotional as well, because this is really important to me and it's really important to my family heritage and history as well. This list we've got arrowsmithing, bell founding – we talked about bell founding last week – bow-making (musical), chain making, clog making. So actually I brought with me, I didn't know anything about this list, right, but to give you an idea of the kind of like craft-orientated teenager I was, I've got really big feet, I'm very tall, I mentioned it before. I couldn't get nice shoes when I was, girly shoes when I was growing up, and it was always really sad for me, because I've got like size 10, 11 UK feet, and I actually had some clogs made when I was a teenager. They made them for me. It's a beautiful clog makers in Mytholmroyd (Walkley Clogs, 2024). Bloody hell, I'm from Yorkshire, I should be doing this better. Anyway, I'll put it in the links. It's near Hebden Bridge. They're still making clogs in a traditional way. And they made me a beautiful pair of sandals that I still have and still wear. I actually–

Adam (22:54): Brought them in here. Here's one I made earlier.

Georgia (22:55): These are my sandals. These are my clogs, my garden clogs. And actually about two, three weeks ago, I mean, I've had them for years and they're still brilliant. They're pretty sturdy. And I was using it to hold a door open and we've got a fox that came in our garden and it kept stealing like my husband's pyjama tops and things. And we just find them in the bushes. And I was going, why is my clog? What are my clogs is missing? I found it around the back of the garden shed. A bloody fox actually ate the leather there

Adam (23:20): Chewed off a bit of leather.

Georgia (23:24): You could go to like a fancy shop like say Toast. I love Toast dresses, they're great. But if you go and buy clogs from them, these [pointing at traditional clogs] are cheaper and handmade in the UK, by a clog makers and they're sturdy and they'll last a long time. Go and look at this list and if there's anything that you're really interested in or you think, wow, I'd love to have this. I'd love to have a straw hat that's made by a craftsperson. You can go and you can find this list and find people. There's also an amazing feature on the website. It's called the Craft Map of the UK [(Heritage Crafts, 2025)]{#craftmap}. And you can literally have a UK map and then all the people who are members of Heritage Crafts, they pop up little dots. You click on them and then you find out that someone near me, tassel making.

Adam (24:02): Amazing. So I'm just skimming this list now and it's the first time George has just shown it to me and we're not going to go through every one because on this critically endangered list there are a lot of different crafts, but saw making, plane making.

Georgia (24:20): Scissor making.

Adam (24:21): Plume making, linen beetling, I'd like to know what linen beetling is.

Georgia (24:24): Well, you can find out by going and looking at this list.

Adam (24:26): And silver spinning, I mean there are so many interesting sounding things on here, but I mean these are sad things that these were– These are important parts of our national heritage and they are part of how we made objects that have helped us live for hundreds of years, the things that we need to live. And yet we've decided that, or, know, that these things are just falling out of fashion because they're no longer hobbies that people partake in or there just aren't enough people to participate in the craft. And I see, I see Fair Isle is there on the list, but Fair Isle...

Georgia (24:55): It's Fair Isle straw back chair making.

Adam (25:00): Let's be specific about it. It's Fair Isle straw back chair making. So that's an interesting craft. Fair Isle is such a small island, guess that's probably why that became endangered.

Georgia (25:12): I mean, Orkney chair making, I think, is on this list and I think it might actually be on the endangered list, not critically endangered. I think looking at the critically endangered and endangered list, Fair Isle knitting, it's thankfully not endangered or critically endangered. And as you can read in the letter from Shetland Stitch Club, they're doing a pretty good job of teaching it in schools, of making sure that it continues as a tradition.

Adam (25:37): I think what we've got here is a strong recommendation for anyone that feels particularly crafty and also with a little bit of a tendency for, "oh I want to go and try something new", then this is the website to go and have a look at. It's Heritage Crafts and looking at the craft status of Heritage Crafts, there are some fantastically intriguing–

Georgia (25:57): It's super intriguing. you know, also another big barrier for people and a reason we would be amiss to not mention the cost of these things in terms of like, that's another reason that people have moved away from it. Buying things from individuals and people who make them is more and more expensive because people have to charge more to make fewer things because it takes a long time. And if you need to make a livelihood and enough to support yourself, then got to charge enough to live. And I don't want to undersell that, but even just looking at these crafts is just so fascinating. And if you are in a position to go, actually, you know, I was going to maybe buy some clogs from Toast, and you know, maybe I can go and get them from a clog maker.

Georgia (26:38): And one of the things I mentioned my family history earlier, and I'm sorry that I'm just sort of like soapboxing on this, but just to close out, this is an example for me of why terminology and accurate representation is so important. And I'm going to have to try and wangle the language here because I don't want to, you know, send the hounds in. I'm from Sheffield and when I did an anthropology of craft course a while ago, there was a book on the reading list that was about Sheffield and I won't name names and I'm also going to change locations and things beyond Sheffield. That's the only identifying feature you're getting. I was really excited to see that there was a book about Sheffield's steel industry and somebody was looking at industrial practices there. So I was reading through the book and I started seeing a place name and thought, doesn't feel right because I know where that place is. That's not where the steel industry is. So let's call one Frogton and one Wickerton.

Adam (27:34): Or let's make it a little bit more so everyone can stay connected with it. Let's call it Mayfair versus–

Georgia (27:42): Dagenham. Mayfair and Dagenham. Now imagine that the author has written an entire book on the history of Dagenham and they mixed it up with Mayfair. And there are hundreds of references to this place where at least three or four generations of men in my family have worked in this equivalent of Dagenham in Sheffield. And where my dad is still working in a cutlery factory in a craft practice. I'd love to talk more about what my dad does in the future. And this person wrote a book that was peer reviewed and critically acclaimed, held up as, this is a really, really fantastic, great example. And it's completely not attributed to the right place in my hometown. And then when you look at where this has been cited, to someone who does not have local knowledge of Sheffield and generally people are not going to have that local knowledge, they look at this book and they look at the good reviews of it, they see that it's been peer reviewed and they go, wow, this is a great source. And I have seen on several occasions and recently this book then being still put forward as, yeah, if you want to read more about Sheffield's history and its relationship to the steel industry, then go and read this book. And I actually, when I found this out, it was a while ago, I emailed the author of this book and said, what's gone on here? Why did you not release any kind of corrections? And he never responded to me. This is why with the question of Fair Isle, like you can hear it in my voice, this was so disrespectful that some of the very little that there is written on my home, the very little that has been respected enough to be included as a prime academic source. When you look for sources on Sheffield, things that done by local historians who are not peer-reviewed and not published by fancy academic publishers, those don't make the grade when you're talking about having really strongly kind peer-reviewed work. And this book does. And finally, if you look at local historians' reading lists, they don't include this book.

Adam (29:53): Which is fair enough because essentially he is crediting all of that to Mayfair rather than Dagenham. And lo and behold you end up thinking from an outsider from Sheffield, you end up thinking that all of this was done in Mayfair and it is completely wrong, it's completely unfair.

Georgia (30:10): I mean, when I told my family about this, my dad went on a bit of a deep dive and actually walked around the equivalent of Dagenham and was trying to check details as well. There were specific organizations, working men's clubs and things that were completely misnamed. And, you know, that might be the only time that their long 100, 150 year history appears in some kind of peer reviewed published book. And it's just so offensive and so wrong, and really sad. So I completely, completely understand where the people of Shetland are coming from with this. I completely understand. yeah, it makes me really angry. Yeah.

Adam (30:50): And it is tragic and I think it's important because even if you can sit there and say, well, I don't see the point in getting the language specifically right because as long as you carry on the idea, that's the important thing. But why do you want to carry the idea on? Why is it being documented? Because it's important. And then documenting it is what you should be doing. And if you want to document it, you need to do that properly. And it is not, you know, getting the name of someone or something right is relatively trivial in the global exercise of trying to document, articulate.

Georgia (31:28): And the thing that really irks me is that you trust these sources and people watching Game of Wool will trust that Channel 4 is going to provide the correct information. And it is so wrong that then people with local knowledge are dismissed. I had to kind of put this down a while ago because it was really upsetting to me at the time. And I can't imagine what it's like to make that kind of mistake in a published document and then be like, my god, what have I done? I can't imagine what that's like. So I don't want to inflate things. I don't want anyone to...

Adam (32:05): We don't want to start a witch hunt at the book for the Sheffield situation, but I think the level of emotion that Georgia carries on this, can see how much it affects people. I mean, ultimately, where they're being misrepresented, misdocumented in terms of how they're life is.

Georgia (32:14): Yeah. It's just hilarious as well because literally the other place in Sheffield that is listed as being the hearty industrial centre of the city, any person from Sheffield will be able to tell you that that's wrong. Because it's literally like the poshest place in the city.

Adam (32:39): We nearly got a Georgia swear there. Just to go back to, I was thinking about concluding this episode Georgia by talking about exactly what Fair Isle is because I realised that we didn't cover that. What's Fair Isle versus stranded knitting?

Georgia (32:51): But I want to, I want to pass on people to the letter because I mean, we can talk about the specifics, but if I'm not a hundred percent sure of what I'm communicating when I'm talking about craft, I'm really, I want to put in disclaimers. I want to say, don't quote me on this. And that's not even because of my own, like my lack of confidence or I'm a woman in academia and I feel like I can't have an opinion. It's nothing to do with that. It's that unless I know that I'm going to do the people of Fair Isle proud. I don't want to say it. So I would say go to the letter. You can do it. If you feel confident to do it, Adam, you can.

Adam (33:29): Well also, just last week we were trying to agree that Georgia had editorial control over this podcast. So although I can say it now, I know full well that she could just cut it. So I'm going to try and get this right. And then if this ends mid-sent– mid-sentence, like it just did, then you know that I got it wrong. I'm not going to call out all the details that make something Fair Isle. You already talked about the yarn choice and I think that's really important. The other thing is the vertical symmetry within a pattern. that was, I suppose that was the most obvious tell to me that we weren't really talking about Fair Isle when we looked at it. Because again, that is something that I pre-researched because I'm currently working on a colourwork piece, which is largely my own composition. And that vertical symmetry to patterns is part of what distinguishes Fair Isle, but also how colours fade. So if you've got a background of blue, you might go through three, four, five different shades of blue within a particular stripe across the garment as the background. And the foreground can also shift in colours. And that's one of the most beautiful things to see in knitting, I think. is an astonishing thing. And it distinguishes it from straight colourwork, where there are all sorts of other things that you can do with colourwork. If you want to put writing and lettering and pictures and so on onto a garment, then those are strictly colourwork rather than Fair Isle. And colour work is a broader term for working with colours and Fair Isle, yeah, strictly two colours per row. And then there are also these things about pattern symmetry. It's an absolutely fascinating subject and as Georgia says, it's well worth going to nerd up on and really read about.

Georgia (35:07): Oh my gosh yeah. It's just pretty joyful as well. I find it really joyful. Like it can all sound, this can all sound kind of depressing, like, endangered crafts, endangered crafts, but it's not. It's joyful and preserving marginalized crafts for what they are with specific terminology. gives an opportunity and distinction between, okay, let's maintain this heritage, this older tradition, but let's have that terminology so we can separate creative innovation and actually have a place for that as well, that is feeding back through and into traditional crafts and skills. Innovation doesn't mean that we have to lose one to gain the other. It means that we can respect both things in the fact that we have Craft Council and we also have Heritage Crafts. We can respect both things and I don't think it has to be one or the other. And I certainly don't think that a celebration of heritage crafts has to be in any way alienating or archaic or exclusionary at all. I think that it can be representative of a lot of communities and cultures that aren't traditionally represented.

Adam (36:11): I think it's a wonderful note to end it on Georgia, thank you. And I think if there's anything to learn from this, if you're not sure, just go and have a quick Google, perhaps unlike the Channel 4 team did. And if you're not sure, call it an Aran style Jumper or a Fair Isle inspired jumper.

Georgia (36:26): Greek style yogurt.

Adam (36:28): Greek style yogurt, it's not Greek yogurt, it isn't from Greece, it's Greek style yogurt.

Georgia (36:34): Inspired by.

Adam (36:36): There are lots of ways to credit where you get the idea from or how you think.

Georgia (36:40): Yeah, and it's an opportunity to actually dive in and find out the specifics of something whilst you're doing it.

Adam (36:48): Yeah. Thank you very much for listening to Episode 4 of Yarn Library with me, Adam Cleevely.

Georgia (36:53): And me Georgia Denham, Tulipurl.

Adam (36:54): We'll speak to you soon.

Georgia (36:55): Go buy some clogs.