Putting the bootee in

The president of the Hastings and Ore WI is up in arms. Not about jam, or Jerusalem, but rather the lack thereof: the head of the East Sussex chapter would like younger, hipper WI groups, such as the Shoreditch Sisters, who in 2011 knitted a blanket decorated with vulvas to raise awareness of FGM, to stop “knitting for protest” and acknowledge the usefulness of creating baby clothes and twiddle muffs instead. Such groups, wrote Stephanie Gaunt on her blog, “do not represent the future I’d like to see for the WI”. One takes her point – it is irksome to be quietly cracking on with crocheting useful baby bootees while someone else takes all the glory for embroidering a vagina. But surely the beauty of the WI is that there is space for everyone – regardless of what they choose to stitch?