She talked about being a Black woman in a predominately white space, of feeling used by white influencers to boost their diversity bona fides, of not speaking out for fear of being labeled “angry.” And she shared a personal experience with Glass, in which she felt the influencer had rebuffed her attempts to talk about some of these issues. One of these women, a yarn dyer named Adella Colvin, took to Instagram Live to express her concerns. To others, it served as confirmation of something they had long suspected: that Glass had always been a little problematic. There have been only a handful of Black women on the cover of Vogue Knitting in its 89-year history, and women of color in popular media are disproportionately scrutinized and attacked.

To many Black women, the comments felt wildly insensitive. (The answer to the latter was simple: the photo was flipped when it was printed on the cover, which often happens in magazine publishing.) But over Thanksgiving weekend, a white knitting YouTuber named Kristy Glass took to Instagram to criticize the cover, asking why Obama was not wearing knitwear and why her wedding ring appeared to be on the wrong hand. Last month’s magazine-circulation 206,000-featured former first lady Michelle Obama in a genial conversation about “becoming a knitter.” The cover was widely celebrated by women of color, who rarely see themselves represented in the white-washed world of knitting media. It started, as approximately zero other controversies have before, with the cover of Vogue Knitting.

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