Language from inside a monastery. A Benedictine monk shares terms from his world: For example, corporate prayer refers to praying as a group, not urging shares to return dividends. And did you know there’s a term of art for those annoying add-on...
Allyn from North Dallas, Texas, who hosts a YouTube show about knitting called Sal & Al: The Woolslayers, emails the show to share some favorite slang used by knitters. LYS stands for one’s Local Yarn Shop, as opposed to a big-box store. Frogging...
Among knitters, SABLE is an acronym for “Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy,” a joking reference to “a supply of yarn so huge that there’s no way you could possibly knit it all before you die.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
All wool and a yard wide means “reliable and trustworthy.” The phrase was part of advertisements in the late 19th century, touting material produced by textile mills that wasn’t shoddy, which meant it was not made from the shredded fiber of old...
In one of history’s greatest stories about yarn, Theseus famously made it back out of the deadly Minotaur’s labyrinth by unspooling a ball of yarn so he could retrace his steps. In Middle English, such rolled-up yarn was called a clewe. Eventually...
Your mother gave you life, and you gave her … a boondoggle. Or is it a lanyard? Maybe a gimp? Grant assures a listener there are several terms for that long key fob you made at summer camp out of plastic yarn. Boondoggle seems to have originated...

