Game of Wool Premiers in UK

It doesn’t look like it’s possible to watch Game of Wool, the new British knitting and crochet competition show, if you don’t have a Channel 4 subscription, which it wouldn’t let me create because I live in the United States (I’m sure I could get there with some fancy VPN work, but my tech guy is out of the office this week). 

So what I’m able to report on the show is what I could glean from other reports, but it looks like the show has been relatively well received so far. As with anything, reactions are mixed, both to the show itself and to host Tom Daley. 

Daley you may recall as a knitter who brought the spotlight to the craft knitting while waiting to compete or in the stands at the Olympics. He’s gone on to have his own knitting line and has written a pattern book. 

Lots of knitters are critical of Daley because the knits he makes and promotes often aren’t very technical and tend to use chunky yarn (which isn’t always bad) and that he’s given opportunities because he’s the novel “man who knits.”

In the case of the show, Daley isn’t a judge, and it’s relatively common for competition shows like this to have hosts who aren’t experts in the field, so it’s nice that he knows the difference between knitting and crochet. 

He’s probably also a bigger draw for the audience than the professional judges, Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell. Gilipin is a Scottish knitter, designer and yarn maker with more than 40 years of design experiences. Greenwell is production manager for Gilpin’s yarn and together they wrote The Gansey Knitting Source Book.

The format of the show involves a group challenge, where contestants have to work together on a big project, and an individual challenge that tests their skill. This week they were covering a couch with knitting and working on a Fair Isle project. The challenges run about 10-12 hours before judging.

Each week one contender goes home (yes, they call it “casting off”) and in eight weeks they’ll have a winner. I assume like The Great British Bake Off that there’s no really prize but the satisfaction of being the best. 

The Guardian calls Daley “a joy, a twinkling whirl of unforced cheer whose obvious passion for all things wool manages to – oh, go on then – knit the whole thing together.”

My hope is that the show elevates knitting and crochet and doesn’t make it look too easy or non-technical because the challenges are done so quickly. The criticism I have seen notes that knitting is meant to be slow, to take time, to be filled with love, not a high-stress, super chunky manufacturing process that hurts the contestants bodies. Should this thing we love to do be forced into the competition box like so many hobbies are in late-stage capitalism? 

Or is it all a bit of fun and the complainers should let people love what they love?

If you’ve seen it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Game of Wool airs for 8 weeks on Channel 4 in the UK. 

[Photo by Channel 4 via Gathered]