I mean, the little house that they were in looked like the sort of place that I would take a bunch of yarn-inclined friends for a long weekend knit-and-natter but argggh, not a show for actual knitters full stop.

It was such a lovely premise! I really wanted it to work! There is a German knitter who wears a bow tie and waves off concern that his team hasn't got their couch cover straight with "What do I know about straight!"

Just such a disappointment.

I really wanted to like this show. I love Sewing Bee. I love knitting and crochet but this feels like the lamest, most shallow attempt to ride the trends and trade on Tom Daley as 'famous guy who knits!'.

Honestly, the more you know about knitting, the less you'll enjoy this show.

One, this is a whole other skill set. Two, you can be SCREWED by your group. Three, this got dropped in your lap so the time to make up the pattern, plan it etc comes out of your knitting time. Four, this doesn't showcase any particular skill. Five, CHUNKY YARN AGAIN.

Finally there was the 'group' challenge. Chunky yarn again. At least they weren't expected to make couch covers by themselves. This was the 'do it on the day' challenge.

I have problems with this.

Compare to Sewing Bee which scales challenges - if you get a tricky fabric, then that's rightly seen as a difficulty multiplier. Here, there was no such concession.

Bonus to the challenge - Tom Daley modeled the finished products, This REEKED of gimmick and getting him more screen time.

The knitter who was 'Cast Off' (which is a STUPID use of the term) was a man who had clearly knitted Fair Isle before but when he tried to steek (cut holes in the knitting) and it failed because of the yarn.

That's not a 'he can't do it', that's the materials failed.

Sewing Bee can set an episode over the course of a weekend because the sewing machines do a lot of the repetitive work/lower the burden.

There is no way to do that for the knitting challenge so they have elected to have them use super chunky yarn...which all of the knitters clearly struggle with.

Cat Distribution System at work

I can definitely see those complaints. It's a shame because I like the idea. The execution is just really bad. I would watch these knitters in something like Sewing Bee but this show is disappointing.

Definitely with the chunky. They do need to use chunky yarn because they have to do a tank top in 8 hours.

Infuriating but book is worth it, I promise