Bootie and Bossy Eat, Drink, Knit

We are back for our second installment on knitting and espionage with Pippa Latour's memoir, The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind Nazi Lines. First a disclaimer: knitting stands out only as the most normal, ordinary thing in the extraordinary life of Pippa Latour, and it plays a critical, albeit small, part in her life as an Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent. Pippa Latour is above...

“Great catering adventure” or act of insanity? It was probably closer to the latter when Bossy offered to cater her son’s film shoot for his senior project on a freezing weekend in February in Philadelphia. Thank God for the help and support of so many people, including sisters-in-law Leslie and Gail and great friends, like Betsy Grenier, who survived the adventure and was willing to talk with us...

Knitting and espionage? What could they possibly share? A lot, as we learned from reading Jenny O’Brien’s new romance novel, The Resistance Knitting Club , which was inspired by the true story of how knitting was used by women working for the British Special Operations (SOE) during World War II. With its two stitches, knit and purl, knitting is a binary system, which makes it a great stand-in for...

Breezy Johnson. Maddie Mastro. Deerdra Irwin. Margie Freed. Lucinda Anderson. Maxime Germain. Jaelin Kauf. Jessie Diggins. Julia Kern. Greta Myers. Ben Ogden. Sure, these are all members of the US Olympic Team who competed in the recent games in Cortina, Italy, but did you know that they are also Knitlympians? They belong to an even more elite circle of athletes who are also accomplished knitters-...

What is Keeley Richardson's idea of a "dream afternoon"? The founder of the online blog and magazine Puget Sound Woolpack does not hesitate: "You guys know this: sitting and knitting and eating cake, I mean, that is probably my dream afternoon. And if only I could spend every afternoon doing that, I would be very happy." We say, "Yes, please! Sign us up!" We could also spend all afternoon listenin...

There's a quiet but powerful movement afoot in the knitting community. It started at Needle & Skein, a full-service yarn store in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota. Wanting to do something to protest the presence of ICE in his state, Paul Neary decided to look back in time for inspiration, and he found it in 1940s Norway. As Neary explains in his "Melt The Ice Hat" pattern, "In the 1940s, Norwegians...

First we want to say that we love that there is a British show about knitting. Period. Full stop. And we love that Tom Daley is the host--he is warm, funny and good humored about testing the knitted deck chairs the contestants make with his well-sculpted butt. But knitters that we are, would Bootie and Bossy go on the show? Let's be clear: NO ONE IS ASKING US. We also don't live in the UK. But the...

So it's the New Year. Hooray. And maybe like us you opened up that closet to put back the decorations and thought, "Do we need all of this? What's in these boxes anyway?" Perhaps your thoughts have now turned to your stash--not your drug stash, or a stash of stolen goods, the word's original meaning when it first entered English usage in 1914. We're talking about your yarn stash . Is it a source o...

What's so great about 1950s America? We admit this is a trick question. It might have been great for men, but at least according to Anne Macdonald in No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting, for many women, particularly young mothers, it felt like being "trapped in a squirrel cage" of modern appliance-packed houses that feminist writer Betty Friedan would later describe as "comforta...

Listen to this episode and you will never look at handspun yarn in quite the same way. A bold claim, we know, but that’s just one of the many things that Natasha Darius taught us in this interview. We met Natasha at Woolworks, Ltd., in Putnam, Connecticut, where she manages the volunteer-run store, teaches spinning, knits and does 10,000 other things. Growing up Haitian in Scotland, Connecticut, s...

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...

What is it about Rhinebeck?! It's hard to believe that a modest gathering of local shepherds and 4-H Clubs to trade fleece and auction small livestock in 1980 is now a booming event attracting 30,000 people from all over the world. We met so many fascinating fiber folks, including Ting who owns a knitting store in Taiwan and three different knitting groups from Kansas City, in addition to seeing s...

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...

Bootie and Bossy are popping in to remind you that the deadline of October 7, 2025 for our 50th episode giveaway is fast approaching! We are giving away two Skellie kits (two winners) from the fabulous www.serialknitters.com All you need to do to enter is to sign up for our newsletter on our website: www.bootieandbossy.com That's it! Don't miss out on your chance to win!

We made it to our 50th episode, so what keeps us going? In a word, YOU. From our listeners to invited guests, to family members who helped with tech and made suggestions--to everyone who graced us with their time, support and expertise, we want to say THANK YOU. And that's why we are offering a great giveaway--two of Debie Frable's Skellie Kits will be awarded to two randomly selected subscribers...

Bare Female Shoulders, Oh My! Flapping through the 1920s in Bootie and Bossy's Episode 49! Why, why, why do men care so much about what women wear? Oh right, because they want to control women, but Irene Castle did not let the condemnation of Pope Pius and other religious leaders stop her from bobbing her hair and baring her shoulders. As a result, Castle was blamed for everything from broken enga...

Let's set the scene: America at the beginning of the 20th Century, and despite their suffocating corsets that created the prized Gibson Girl physique, women are on the move, literally--they are fishing, biking, golfing, playing tennis and riding in those new automobiles. And there's a war raging between the Suffragists fighting for Women's rights, and the Anti-Suffragists who think it's enough tha...

How do you eat Cheetos safely while knitting so everything is not covered with a fine neon orange dust? Chopsticks! How do you keep your balls of yarn from doing the Tango in your knitting bag while you are not looking? Yarn bras! How do you get yourself to do the things that you really don't want to do, like bookkeeping and managing your social media? Wear a tiara! How do fix your yarn after frog...

Here's something we love: Hunter Hammersen's "quiet, everyday magic that's easy to overlook. But it's magic nonetheless." She is talking about her "Noteworthy" pattern for a little pouch that looks like a piece of paper because "paper is magic, and the right piece of paper can change the world." When Bootie knit this little gem, it brought her "a bit of happy distraction," and while that did not c...

Inquiring minds want to know: where is Napolean's penis these days? We will give you a hint: it's not with the rest of his body, but it's a cautionary tale for today's despots that we think should be more widely known. To be clear, the whereabouts of Napolean's penis is not discussed in Anne Macdonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting , but many other fascinating historical...

Piety! Purity! Submissiveness! Domesticity! These are the four pillars of the "Cult of True Womanhood" in 19th-Century America according to Anne Macdonald in No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting, and we say, "No thanks!" We also say "no thanks" to knitting in covered wagons, the long skirts that created clouds of dust, and the bloomers that replaced them. And then there's Brigham...

If George Washington knew about Debie Frable's Killer Sangria, he probably would have wanted A LOT of it to help him get through the Revolutionary War because boy, is this good stuff! Make it TODAY. But at the time, Washington really just wanted socks--he never had enough socks, as we learned from reading Anne L. Macdonald's No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting . As much as knitt...

Behind the scenes at Serial Knitters with Debie Frable in Bootie and Bossy's Episode 42! Ever wonder what goes into hand-dyed yarn? The short answer is A LOT, as we learned from Debie Frable, owner of Serial Knitters Dye House. First there’s the prepping of the yarn—teasing out each tie on the skein so that the dye can fully penetrate the fiber (unless you want something that looks like tie-dye)....

What's worth talking about? Pixar's short "Purl" in Bootie and Bossy's Episode 41! What happens when a pink ball of yarn named Purl starts working at B.R.O. Industries? Find out in Kristen Lester’s Pixar animated short “Purl.” There’s a lot going on in these 8 minutes that’s worth talking about. It’s “unbeweavable,” as Purl herself would say, but there’s a deeper message underneath all of the knit...

Snow! Rain! Ice! Wind! When the blows of winter buffet us, we need to find joy in small things like bowls of warm, tasty Jamaican Chicken Curry, compliments of Kim Davis of Slaycation fame. Kim might not love cooking, but sometimes the non-cooks have the one tried-and-true recipe that hits all the notes. This recipe will definitely make it into your regular rotation because it’s delicious, easy an...