Steganography & Knitting

Steganography, not to be confused with stenography, is the art or practice of concealing a message, image, or file within another message, image, or file.  Knitting has been used as a tool in steganography in several distinct ways.

Arguably the best known example of steganography in knitting is written about by Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities.  The character Madame Defarge is a tricoteus or knitting woman who chooses to knit while watching beheadings during the French Revolution.  Defarge didn't just sit and knit she used her knitting as a form of code and created a list of the upper class doomed to die.  Leave it to Dickens to take the act of knitting, generally done by kindly, mature ladies demonstrating domesticity and turn it into an act of cruelty, revenge and the macabre.

Sky Fish Knitting offers up a way such a code could be achieved because Dickens didn't write about it:

One possible way to encrypt names is by using a unique set of three stitches for each letter of the alphabet, omitting the letter K and diacritical marks. A skilled, rapid knitter would be able to encrypt a name of eighteen letters and marks, such as Charles St. Evremonde, in only fifty-four stitches. Madame Defarge probably found a simple scarf, not a shroud, the best garment to knit in what would appear to be a somewhat abstract design. The cipher would be knitted only on the front side of the garment. Borders of garter stitch would be necessary to keep the coded section clear and the edges neat. Alternate rows would most likely be purled (purled back) to keep the encrypted letters relatively distinct.

And there you go, a steganographic scarf.  I did read this book decades ago, but don't remember enough of the details about knitting to now answer my own questions.  It might be time to revisit it.

During World War II some countries instituted what might on the surface appear to be a series of seemingly bizarre restrictions. The following were among banned items:  the international mailing of postal chess games, crossword puzzles, newspaper clippings, knitting instructions, lovers' X's and O's, children's drawings, and report cards all of which could serve as a communications medium for spies. 

Remember the look of a lace chart:

Surely it doesn't take a wild imagination for those perhaps not familiar with knitting charts to think a secret code is hiding among all these X's, O's along with all the rest of the special marks.  Knitting charts as a spying technique using a special code; yet another juxtaposition to the characteristics of the average knitter and about as jolting as a tricoteus at the guillotine.

Messages could also be written in Morse code on yarn and then be knitted into a piece of clothing worn by a courier as well.  Although I don't fully understand how this last one is done I have to say I find knitting spies making clothing that carries code do appear to be immensely creative.

Having said all of this some knitters do purposefully add a secret message to their knitting using Morse code.  While knitting a gift for someone who is ill one could knit wishes for good health into the design.  Check out the "I Wool Always Love You" cowl with the words embedded in Morse code by Karen Templer here.  She shares the pattern for those of you interested in making it.  Or how about mittens that in Morse code tell you something about themselves.  Kate Atherley designed such mittens and you can find her pattern here.  The possibilities are endless once you start thinking about them and learn the appropriate code. 

To those who may be wondering the answer is, no, I have not yet started to add encoded messages in anything I've knit up to this point.  But I have to admit there's something intriguing about doing so, be it steganographic or not.