Friday, January 19, 2007
Not only is sock knitting (especially the genteel, lady-of-the-house Christian variety) seen as a diametric opposite to worldly speculative thought on the level of Ray Bradbury, but in a strange real-world twist, monetarily successful sock knitters trigger their bank's fraud alarm:Perhaps the bank thought Blue Moon was selling crack-infused sock yarn, or something equally ridiculous; more on the story at the Yarn Harlot. [Image comes with apologies to Vincent van Gogh and Warrant...well, maybe not Warrant.]The knitting community is large and rich (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s blog, yarnharlot.ca, raised over $120,000 for Tricoteuses Sans Frontiers in less than three days, this Christmas), so it’s surprising that we are still so socially invisible. Maybe $120K isn’t so much, on the scale of the entertainment industry. But here’s the interesting part:
This morning, one of the most popular producers of hand-dyed sock yarn, Blue Moon Fiber Arts, announced that they were making so much money on their sock yarn that their bank managers decided it must be a front for something illegal, and shut down Blue Moon’s credit card system, and refunded all of the money for the 2007 Sock Club! [Katrina Triezenberg, Ph.D., in a communiqué to Freakonomics Blog]
Do Banks Have a Beef With Sock Knitters?
