Britain’s best knitter C4

[2Rebecca]

With Tom Daley who annoys me but I like that it’s proper knitting not dumbed down and they’re starting with a fairisle tank top

This is the article from Shetland Times about misrepresentation of Fair Isle knitting.

https://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/news/letter-you-ve-misrepresented-an-entire-culture-open-let-418907/

Thank you for the link. I read the letter and found it very interesting and informative. In fact I enjoyed it far more than the knitting show! I feel like heading off to Shetland right now tbh😅 I would love a section on the history of knitting.

The Shetland folks take their craft seriously and are not to be messed with.

That is it for me. Dog cruelty and ridiculous challenges. There must have been so many more opportunities to show knitting and crochet skills than this rubbish.

They won't have the facilities to press the knitting because it shouldn't be pressed but it should be blocked (wetted then pinned into shape and left to dry) but again it's a time consuming process.

They would be much better sending them away with a project to complete and giving them something achievable in a few hours to do in the barn. So on the day they could have to design their tank top and knit a swatch to show their motifs and have to return with the completed garment x days later rather than rushing to complete something in super chunky that means it has to lack detail and finesse.

Depends on the yarn and the type of knitting, but steam blocking where you hover the iron just above the fabric but don’t apply pressure can help. Not everything needs wet blocking.

I've been known to block acrylic with a hairdryer because I am a cheap date and can't wear wool.
But the show doesn't give them anywhere close to enough time to achieve properly finished garments let alone adding in time to block them properly. Mind you I've always thought Sewing Bee should give them X hours sewing time then say 15 minutes finishing time in which the can't touch the sewing machine but can press the item, snip any stray threads etc so they can display what they have made at it's very best.

Dogs looked silly.
Does Tom need to wear eyeshadow.

Imo:
Tom can wear what he likes.
Dressing dogs up is cruel.

I am certain I’m not misremembering that when I was a kid in the otherwise dark days of the 1970s it was generally accepted that dressing animals like dogs and cats in costumes just for fun was unkind. And yet we still had circuses with lions and tigers and even elephants.
Now the circus animals are thankfully no more but the internet is awash with pictures of obviously pissed off cats and stressed dogs wearing Halloween costumes and apparently it’s fine.
I’m not a dog body language expert and it may well be that very often the owner knows the dog well enough to be confident it doesn’t mind and maybe this one was absolutely fine, but it still seems like an irresponsible thing for a tv show to encourage.

Can't imagine anyone taking the dog out like that.
Apparantely not many people applied for the show.

Oh wow. That may explain why Meadow was on the show, despite her inexperience.

They said something to the effect that one of the tasks would normally take 20 hours but they were only allowing 12. Given that they were going to edit it down to 20 minutes or so anyway, I really couldn't see the point of reducing the time available to the knitters. With something like the mistake about which side the raglan was going to be, we all know the reality is that no knitter would leave it alone and try to bodge something, you'd undo back to the beginning of the error and put it right.

Yes you’re right, that’s really not something you would bodge! All credit to them for finding a way through and not throwing up their hands in despair but it makes it even more irrelevant to reality.
I presume the tight times are about keeping filming costs down. By making it all studio based rather than letting them take it home they have made it so time is money.

I actually thought the way they treated Meadow was the worst thing about the show.

I don't mind Tom Daley and thought he looked quite cute in that sparkly eye shadow.

I thought the Shetland Times letter (from a non-native Shetlander) was way OTT and the long term impact of the show is likely to be a boost for Fair Isle and certainly won't have a negative impact on the culture.

The challenges are silly but quite diverting and interesting, and might inspire others to pick up a pair of needles. It's like some Bake Off challenges and the Sewing Bee transformation challenges - no-one would do them at home but they might inspire some people to push the boundaries and be more creative.

There is a format and a style to these programmes which serious crafters often take exception to - but the truth is, just sitting watching people calmly doing what they love would be quite dull and would have a tiny audience appeal.

But - they chose a young woman whose lack of experience meant she had a basic flaw in her knitting. They chose to give her quite harsh feedback about that - she had no idea she was doing it wrong and found out while she was in a nationally filmed competition. Then basically had a panic attack when she couldn't keep up in the team round. And did anyone else think the team members seemed a bit unsupportive? Could just be the editing but they didn't seem to react very much and I'd have expected some hugs or encouraging words.

They chose her because she was young and personable and a bit funky looking. They might have had low numbers of applicants, but there would almost certainly have been stronger knitters than Meadow. It seemed a bit brutal and I hope she is OK.

I agree with this assessment. I had a friend who worked at the location where they did first pass auditions for Bake Off. They had to bring in something they had made and talk about it to camera. But they were also given another task and then interrupted to do the talking. It was more important to the production team that they had a "cast" who could respond well while doing something else than could bake brilliantly.

There is a format and a style to these programmes which serious crafters often take exception to - but the truth is, just sitting watching people calmly doing what they love would be quite dull and would have a tiny audience appeal.

Agreed - and there are plenty of YouTubers who deliver this niche content very well.

I don't really understand the group challenges, you don't get it in other shows like bake off or sewing bee. I'd rather just see another individual project.

I reckon it’s for two reasons.
One is to create interpersonal drama where otherwise there would just be people chatting pleasantly.
The other is so they can do bigger projects, given the time issues discussed upthread. It worked well with the jumpers in ep2.
I don’t mind it tbh. Working together isn’t completely alien in knitting; examples include yarn bombing, even Woolly Hugs. I have seen antique stockings where there’s evidence one person knitted the leg and another turned the heel.

We watched the two shows and found it very difficult to keep a straight face at the angst from the judges, I could hear the John McEnroe “You can’t be serious” echoing in my head. Don’t think I’ll bother watching any more.

Knitting hats for dogs? Who thought of that nonsense?

She said she'd been knitting since a child, when her granny showed her.

Yes, but she had a basic flaw in the way she knitted that, if it's important, they would have spotted at the audition stage. So they let her on knowing she hadn't done intarsia and had a dodgy knitting technique, then watched her fall apart on national TV. It seemed a bit cruel.

I liked the cardigan Meadow was wearing during the last show. If that was her own design, kudos to her.

I was just thinking I could never do a show like this not least because if I'm doing a long stretch of fairly straightforward knitting or crochet I really need to be gossiping with friends or watching something on TV. I would get bored to death doing endless rows of stocking stitch or crochet trebles without something else to occupy my mind.

I thought it looked similar to Tom's. and his was by Hope McCauley. I saw an article saying he is show casing recent textiles graduates' work through the series.

Best Sellers | Hope Macaulay

What was the basic flaw?

One thing that disappointed me about the show was that I would really like to see a focus on each contestant’s technique, how each one holds their yarn and needles; I am trying to work on my technique to get faster but the camera never seems to home in on the actual knitting for long enough.

There were a couple of faults they picked up. Something to do with the way she knitted wrong side rows or purled, she was twisting stitches and it wasn't lying flat. Also when you are doing colour work like on the guitar motif you have to kind of wrap one yarn behind the other when swapping colours or you get wee holes.