Last night I was discussing with my extremely patient husband, the phenomenon of jargon and how it pervades all walks of life. Partly it is all about short cuts, but mostly, of course, it is about being ‘in the know’ and feeling that you are an expert in the field. We talked about the professions – the legal profession used to be all about Latin, after all (res ipsa loquitor, habeas corpus,) although less so now I believe. And then we turned to our particular pastimes. In my husband’s case these are cricket (LBW and all sorts of other things I don’t dare write down) and sailing which has a whole language all of its own which even permeates every day language, my favourite being ‘tell tails’ which are little tags of rope on a sail to indicate the wind direction. My pastimes are gardening, where the jargon is particularly related to knowledge of plant names, I think (back to Latin again) and of course, knitting. I am now so immersed in this world that I have become a bit casual about the jargon and sometimes have to be reminded, often by people new to the game, that they do not know what DPNs are.
So here, in order to help you all be in the ‘in the know’ are a few abbreviations and phrases in the knitting and crocheting world that I have come across:
BOR: Beginning of Round or Beginning of Row
CAL: Crochet Along
Cake: Yarn wound into a cylindrical shape
DPNs: Double Pointed Needles (for knitting in the round)
FO: Finished Object
Frog: undoing all your knitting (from the sound ‘rip it, rip it’)
KAL: Knit Along
KIP: Knit in Public (I am not sure why this is even an issue but then I was the same about breastfeeding and have to accept that not everyone feels the way I do)
LYS: Local Yarn Store (that’s us)
MKAL/MCAL: Mystery Knit or Crochet Along – the designer will release the pattern week by week and the crafter will have to create without knowing what the finished version will be like
OTN: On the Needles
PHD: Project Half Done
Pooling: when one colour in a variegated yarn bunches together – people will sometimes knit alternate rows in a different skein of the same yarn to avoid this
Tink: Undoing knit stitches one by one (Tink is Knit backwards)
UFO: Unfinished Object
Vanilla: an easy plain pattern eg Vanilla Socks
WIP: Work in Progress
Yarn Barf: Big lump of yarn that comes out of the middle of a ball of yarn
As I did this list I thought of so many more that relate to the technicalities of the craft: Fixed Circulars, Cable Needles, Interchangeable Needles, Stitch Markers, Row Counters – all the the kit that anyone might need for a particular project, but really this is not jargon but the names of necessary tools which could perhaps be the subject of another blog one day.
I am sure that many of you will have other jargon to add to this list – I would love to hear what you might have.
Right. I am now off to see what I have OTN among all my PHDs or WIPs. I can tell you know that I have at least one pair of Vanilla Socks on the DPNs. And I hope to see you here in your LYS soon – if only to admire our new shop front, with which I am very pleased.
