Edinburgh Fringe 2025

Stitch in Time: A Knitting Cabaret

Melanie Gall presents

Genre: Historical, Live Music, Music

Venue: theSpace@Surgeons Hall

Festival: Edinburgh Fringe

Low Down

Review

Knitting.  It’s a passion for many people and not all of them are grey/silver haired with a gait that’s a bit less sprightly than it once was.  But who on earth would come in at the crack of Fringe dawn for a show about knitting?  What possessed those wonderful schedulers at theSpaceUK to stick this in their programme?

Well, it’s the Fringe, stupid.  Open your mind up!  People seek out the eccentric, the eclectic and the just plain weird.  But whilst it would be tempting to pigeon-hole Canadian Melanie Gall’s engaging, entertaining and enlightening show Stitch In Time : A Knitting Cabaret into one or more of these Fringe categories, it is much, much more than that.

For a start, it’s jammed full of knitters, all keen to display their latest creations, some complete, some a work-in-progress and some, erm, with a bit of a design problem.  Gall even has some part-finished knitting that a lady in the front row volunteered to work on as she watched – that’s multi-tasking for you.

Part narration, part musical, Gall has spent a long time pulling this show together, researching the role that knitting played across two World Wars in terms of providing troops with much needed clothing and its ingenious part in espionage and resistance in the 1939-45 conflict.

Gall’s turned up over 150 songs dedicated to, yep, knitting, each requiring a lyricist, a score, a publicist and a publisher.  With no radio, movies, TV or other accoutrements associated with 21st century living, songs a century ago were largely consumed through buying sheet music and learning to play them yourself.  The novelty song was a major segment in this burgeoning sheet music industry and knitting numbers rapidly became a sizeable niche as women (and it was almost always women clicking the needles) were encouraged to knit for the troops fighting for victory.

By the time WWII arrived, music was being consumed through movies, radio and, of course, the gramophone record but knitting songs morphed from the novelty to the mainstream.  Even Glenn Miller was moved to write and record one, Knit One, Purl Two, not his best number by any stretch, but one that survives as a recording and formed part of Gall’s set list.

Peacetime pretty much killed the knitting song but knitting itself has survived and thrived – it’s been around for over 2,000 years after all and there’s no end to the creations people come up with; apparently one woman in the Netherlands, frustrated with her inability to find the man of her dreams, knitted one, a complete (presumably mute) boyfriend.

This is a remarkably entertaining/educational hour of seamlessly combined music and spoken word.  Gall is a consummate raconteur and, with her powerful, opera trained voice, a mellifluous singer.  Every word, sung or spoken, is crystal clear and her friendly face captures and keeps the attention of her audience and her use of simple, handheld illustrations during her narration added colour and humour in equal measure.  She even found time to throw in a self-deprecating segue about her own knitting habit.

And interesting nuggets from her research just kept tumbling from her lips.   Lord Kitchener (remember him) personally solved the problem of troops’ trench foot in WWI, by knitting.  Innocent looking, elderly Belgian women sat on porches in houses near train tracks in WWII, knitting as they watched the trains come and go – they were knitting train timetables in code that they passed to the Resistance to use against their Nazi occupiers.

Gall’s string of stories (and songs) seems almost endless but it all fits together beautifully.  This comes as a highly recommended show – tightly scripted; top class singing; engaging storytelling; helpful illustrations; seamless presentation; genuinely enlightening.  Well worth making space for in your (no doubt packed) schedule.

Published August 14, 2025 by Tim Wilcock