The surprisingly scandalous world of knitting: From yarn dyers faking their own deaths to wars on woke and ‘scam festivals’

The act of knitting might conjure serene scenes of grandmothers with balls of yarn at their feet as their needles click away they chat over pots of tea.

But for those in the know, the world of knitting is filled with scandal and drama. 

From fake deaths to political disagreements, there’s no shortage of scandal to untangle in the world of fibre arts.

Among the most well-known lore is that of Danielle Glunt, an independent yarn dyer who became very popular in the early noughties for her company, Mystic Creations Yarn.

Demand for Danielle’s products exploded after she was featured on a knitting podcast. 

But it soon became clear she was overwhelmed by the volume of orders as customers began posting online that the yarn was arriving in unacceptable conditions – if arriving at all.

Many complained via Ravelry – a social media site for keen knitters –  that Mystic Creations Yarn was taking payment but no order were being shipped out. 

But instead of being transparent about the issues she was facing with deliveries, Danielle chose a much more bizarre route to get herself out of a knot.

Mystical Creations Yarn customers began receiving emails from someone claiming to be Danielle’s sister explaining that the delay was due to Danielle suffering from a ‘debilitating illness’, which later morphed into her being hospitalised with leukaemia.

Then, two years later, another email from Danielle’s ‘sister’, Margaret, claimed that Danielle had tragically passed away and that she was ‘crying so hard’ she could ‘hardly talk/write’.

However, the emails were met with scepticism as several posts later emerged from people claiming to have seen her or heard from her in real life.

One person, who claimed to be a former employee of Danielle’s, said they had seen the apparently late yarn dyer in Walmart just a few days before the announcement.

Another said they saw Danielle depositing checks at a local bank branch shortly after she was meant to have died, adding: ‘She was driving a brand new car with dealer stickers and tags still on it, I might add.’

While the drama around Mystic Creations Yarn has since ebbed away, Danielle’s story remains an unforgettable part of the online knitting community’s fabric.

The act of faking one’s death – known as pseudocide – was rife in the early 2000s as internet forums and message boards like Ravelry – – began taking off, leading to a surge in sales that some small businesses couldn’t keep up with.

Incredibly, Danielle wasn’t the only independent yarn dyer to fake her own death.

Stephanie Lorraine Cullison hand-dyed yarn company Goth Socks was so popular, her booths at yarn conventions would be mobbed by fans.

Her business became so successful that, in her best year, Stephanie told The Seattle Times that she made US$200,000, with a US$40,000 profit.

However, life was less kind – she went through a messy divorce and developed depression.

She was prescribed medication that wasn’t right for her, which led to her losing custody of her children and struggling to keep up her mortgage payments, according to the publication.

The stress of her personal life and health issues began to impact Goth Socks. 

In an effort to buy herself time, Stephanie shared a blog post in which she claimed she had overdosed on her medications and her ‘heart stopped’.

‘I collapsed in my bedroom for over 10 hours on my left arm. When I was found, my pulse was at 30 beats a minute and when they pulled me out of the room, my heart stopped. I was dead for 10 minutes,’ she wrote.

However, irate customers didn’t buy it. Some pointed out that the chances of survival if a heart has stopped beating for 10 minutes are extremely low – even after nine minutes, severe and permanent brain damage is likely.

After granting refunds to most of her customers and shutting down her account, Stephanie gave up dyeing yarn, admitting that she ‘[overestimated] my own capacity’.

Still today, knitters use the phrase ‘zombie yarn dyers’ as an inside joke to reference the slew of fake deaths that took place in the early days of Ravelry – which has had its own share of controversies.

In 2019, Ravelry banned users from expressing any support of Donald Trump or his administration and removed knitting patterns that endorsed the US president.

The move came after a user was allegedly doxed and threatened by a pattern creator whose Trump 2020 knitting pattern was reported as offensive.

Ravelry said in a statement: ‘We are not endorsing Democrats nor banning Republicans.

‘We are definitely not banning conservative politics. 

‘Hate groups and intolerance are different from political position.’

Another politics-adjacent scandal the craft community witnessed occurred in 2021, when Michelle Obama appeared on the cover of Vogue Knitting and spoke of her lockdown hobby.

‘Knitfluencer’ Kristy Glass, who has over 32.9k subscribers on her YouTube channel, took to Instagram to question the validity of the former First Lady’s cover feature, pointing out that Michelle did not wear any knits in the shoot and had never been photographed knitting.

But whilst Kristy may have thought her questions were innocent enough, she was quickly branded insensitive and racist, particularly as there have only been a few Black women on the cover of Vogue Knitting, which was first published in 1932.

The uproar over her comments led Kristy to post multiple apologies, the first of which was deemed ‘backhanded’.

She said she ‘made a mistake by talking about the editorial choices of the cover’, adding: ‘I now know that I should have just celebrated the cover and not questioned anything about it.’

Later, Kristy wrote a longer apology but it was too late – she had been officially cancelled, according to fans. 

She then set her Instagram to private and deleted her YouTube account, which was only recently revived.

As if to dispel any doubts raised by Kristy, Michelle shared a black-and-white photograph of herself sitting in an armchair while knitting in December 2023.

She wrote in the caption: ‘Every time I tell people how much I love to knit, they seem so surprised! But it truly has become one of my most meaningful (and fun) pastimes.’

Another prominent knitting influencer who found themselves in the firing line of angry knitters was Maria Tusken, who in 2019 released a line of yarn colours named with terms from ‘social justice warrior lingo’.

Some of the tongue-in-cheek names included ‘Gaslight’, a lime green yarn, pale blue ‘Microaggression’ yarn, ‘bright pink-red ‘Woke’, and ‘Problematic’ which was bright orange – with the entire collection being called ‘Polarising Knits’.

Maria told Buzzfeed at the time that the names were ‘inspired by current culture and words/phrases that are popular right now’.

‘I am using words that people from both sides of this ‘debate’ use. For example, some people use words like ‘woke’, ‘purity spiral’ and ‘virtue signal’ to describe the actions of those they oppose.

‘And then the other side uses words and phrases like ‘problematic’, ’emotional labour’ and ‘sitting with my discomfort’. No one owns any of these words.’

But a huge number of knitters did not appreciate Maria’s woolly commentary and lambasted her for mockery and ‘co-opting words that are meant to protect marginalised folks’.

In 2022, Maria closed her dyed yarn business and went silent on social media. Last year, she resurfaced in an interview with right-wing YouTuber Keri Smith to talk about life after ‘being cancelled’ by the knitting community.

She did not regret her yarn names but added: ‘I won’t go in a yarn shop because they are woke. 

‘One of the ladies I was talking to at this yarn shop, she travels around… and she said 80 per cent  or 90 per cent of yarn shops are very woke. It’s crazy. Why knitting?’

More recently, beloved YouTuber Hank Green – the brother of John Green, author of hit novel The Fault in Our Stars –  found himself tangled up in knots after releasing an episode of his SciShow about the craft.

Hank, 45, unleashed fury when he suggested that knitting – which has existed since at least the 11th century – has until recently been innovated only ‘through trial and error’ and suggested that new technology has now elevated the humble craft thanks to scientists, not centuries of knitters.

A number of people were infuriated by the video, which was interpreted by many as a ‘devaluing’ of the craft, which is largely carried out by women – going so far as to label Hank and the SciShow team as ‘blatantly misogynistic’ and ‘dismissive’.  

Responding to the backlash, Hank shared a TikTok video in which he praised knitting as a ‘tremendous, bonkers technology’, and said he had ‘learned a lot’ from the furore.

Jess Stempert, a producer on SciShow, issued a separate apology and said the show did not intend to ‘alienate knitters or misrepresent the craft’. 

‘Rather, we were intending to engage and invite non-knitters to learn about this craft that’s got way more going on than they may have imagined,’ she explained.

Not all the drama that swirls around the knitting world takes place online.

In 2010, a week-long UK Knit Camp was organised by a company called Events by British Yarn Ltd promised an international gathering of knitting experts and enthusiasts in Stirling University, Scotland.

Over 20 experts from around the world were due to arrive at the event to impart their wisdom to keen knitters, but it was later revealed they had been stitched up.

One American expert wrote on Ravelry that the appropriate work permit they had been promised would be sorted had failed to materialise, which led them to being detained at the airport and later deported.

Others were left thousands of pounds out of pocket when organiser Jo Watson failed to pay them for their work or expenses.

Oldies magazine reported at the time that the experts were given excuse after excuse for not getting payment, with Jo finally complaining on her blog that people ‘came with the objective to find fault in absolutely everything’.

Knitting pattern designs, crucial for creating beautiful articles of clothing and accessories, are also the subject of contention.

One rather memorable incident had people fired up over a darling pattern for babies, which resulted in a sweet blanket that resembled a peapod.

Details are scant, but it apparently involved knitters who became incensed when the highly popular pattern disappeared from Ravelry with little explanation.

Obsessed crafters then began asking others on the website if they had purchased the pattern when it had been available, and whether they would share it with them for free – sparking a debate over the ethics of pattern-sharing.

Thievery is also rife when it comes to knitting patterns. Earlier this year, pattern designers discovered a group on the popular chat platform Discord that was dedicated to sharing patterns for free.

Many who saw their own patterns being shared in the group were understandably outraged, as designers make money from selling their patterns – whereas the group meant they were missing out on income. 

As the online knitting community continues to grow in popularity, especially thanks to TikTok, or ‘KnitTok’ as it is known, gossip and scandals are always just around the corner.

Since the pandemic, the number of knitters has soared in the UK. 

Among them is Olympian heartthrob Tom Daley, who went viral in 2022 after he was pictured knitting while watching his Team GB teammates dive in Tokyo.

He is now the decorated diver is the face of a new knitting and crocheting competition show on Channel 4 called The Game of Wool, where judges Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell will whittle down the hunt for Britain’s best knitter.

 The show comes as knitting is seeing another surge in interest, with celebrities and influencers like Raye and Nara Smith knitting together on TikTok to cult fashion brand Damson Madder recently launching knitting kits in collaboration with Wool and the Gang.

As Channel 4’s Game of Wool begins, more people will undoubtedly be inspired to pick up their needles and get stitched in – which can only mean more drama is on the way.