The other day I posted a reel of me grafting a sock toe together and it prompted some discussion about 'Kitchener stitch'. Kitchener is the guy on those well-known army posters where he's pointing at you and text reads "Britons want you". Let me tell you why I do not call it that. It doesn't take much digging to find this information by the way if you want to read up on it yourself.
Kitchener was high up in the British army during the Boer War and is responsible for concentration camps which were used as part of the 'Scorched Earth Policy' which he employed and expanded. That is a policy where the land and its inhabitants are utterly destroyed - wells are poisoned, land is salted, buildings burned, people slaughtered.
To quote: "This policy included the incarceration of tens of thousands of women and children, who were forcibly moved into 45 concentration camps throughout the Transvaal. There were another 64 concentration camps for black Africans who had made the serious error of supporting the Boers. More than 26,000 Afrikaans women and children died in these camps. We do not have any figure for the similar number of black Africans who died, as the British army did not regard them as important enough to keep records."
In all honesty there are some things that put him in a more positive light, but with a lifetime of - and a reputation for - brutality and war atrocities the scales are very heavily weighted on the negative side (understatement!).
Grafting as a technique was already in use before WW1 which is when it seems to have been named in honour of him instead - it seems socks for the troops used this technique to help prevent blisters from sock seams, and from what I've read I think it was so-called in order to spur on home production of the socks.
So... as Karie Westermann said earlier on twitter: language matters.

8 comments


  • It always really annoys me the various misnomers that appear in our knitting world!
    I knew about Kitchener but not the full extent of the atrocities for which he is known. Thank you for this.
    Grafting is what it is, always has been for hundreds of years, grafting is what it remains!
    Well done you for bringing this to our attention!

    Penny Kostick on

  • Thanks for sharing this information. I had no idea! I’ll be going with grafting going forward.

    Shellye McKinney on

  • I appreciate the history lesson. I’m sure I will remember it the next time I GRAFT the toes of my. socks.

    Rebecca on


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