…this is a hostage situation.

Who will be an emotional support dog for the emotional support dogs?

Gone To The Dogs

For this week’s Solo Challenge, because yes, it does seem that the back half of this show being The Apprentice For Knitting is here to stay, is for the knitters to make a costume for a pair of Italian greyhounds.

The theme for the week was Icons

but it’s pronounced “Icons?” followed by a noncommittal shrug. A sort of Bring Your Own Icons – these could be anything. And truly the knitters did go with anything – some usual suspects (Bowie, Freddie) were there and then we had The Concept of Cathedrals, Unicorns and 18th century Italian Theatre. This does at least mean the show might not receive another stern letter from Shetland’s Organisation of Knitters who are risking being proscribed as a terrorist organisation the way they’re gunning for this show

truly this is the Craft Wank to end all Craft Wank – and the show has to endure another 6 weeks of this and they’re already just about being taken to court for using “peerie” as a noun.

The show having fired a 12 gauge knitted shotgun into its own foot aside, this episode did at least feel like they felt the pervasive misery of the first episode and scaled everything back a bit. They are of course still gleefully advertising that the knitters don’t have even half the time needed to make an Italian Greyhound look even more like its suffering from severe social anxiety

but Holger only had to complain once about not having enough time! So clearly things are better! For now, the fun of the dog challenge does lull you into a false sense of security before the wretched jumper relay starts. The wildest part of this particular challenge is that the show didn’t think to get dog mannequins in, Holger had to make his own!

and if he hadn’t, they wouldn’t have had the glamour shots of the outfits that the dog under no circumstances wanted to wear

Isaac however, did look very fetching in the Gritty costume and I’m sure would’ve been willing to model everyone else’s outfits

I do enjoy the profound lack of difference between the Isaac’s Gritty and Tracy’s David Bowie

the dog outfit did have to be two pieces – a coat and a hat, so nobody could attempt to ponder the conundrum of how a dog wears pants

and these costumes also had to be “practical” which does feel a little bit antithetical to trying to put a tiny hat on a tiny dog. And even more so to covering a dog in tinsel like a pride parade just threw up on it

that is a Christmas jumper you wear once and then never again because it brings you out in a rash worse than if you’d rolled around in nettles. But I’m just pleased for Dipti because at least she got experience a semblance of joy on this godless programme

but I do think we might have found the problem, she’s a crocheter and not a knitter which does beg the question of WHAT THIS SHOW IS EVEN DOING?

and despite her best efforts to get herself eliminated because she’s walked into the wrong lecture and is too shy to leave, her curse is to always have someone be slightly worse than her – Gordon’s steeking and this week Meadow having Di and Sheila peering over her shoulder like a pair of vultures watching Henry Morton Stanley slowly succumbing to dehydration in the kalahari pointing out that she’s been knitting wrong the whole time (I think? I don’t know. Please don’t kill me, the board of directors at Shetland’s Organisation of Knitters)

YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING LAST WEEK!?

and I think this is where the cavernous gap in vibe between this, The Great British Knitting Apocalypse, and something like Throwdown or Sewing Bee becomes most apparent. We’ve had plenty of instances of Potters, Bakers and Sewers doing things the judges wouldn’t consider a usual technique or something being done wrong. And USUALLY that ends with some helpful advice and a joke to put the contestants at ease so they can continue. This moment? NOPE. They tell Meadow she’s wrong and then just leave her to sit there like a lemon clutching her square of very wrong knitting and trying not to cry

I’m genuinely impressed that she finished her Freddie Mercury jumper and unwearable crown (it does bare repeating how much Holger’s dog mannequin saved this episode)

because I’d have been an inconsolable mess and just waded into the sea to feel the cold and deadly embrace of the ocean’s inherent eroticism – my personal icon. Which is only half as nebulous a concept as Simon’s icon being a Not At All Specific Cathedral

I want to know what the exact wording of the brief was that he felt confident enough in this concept??? Don’t get me wrong, it’s well knitted, save for the freeform crochet stained glass window that looks like an overdone pepperoni pizza

just say your icon is a wood fired pizza oven, it’s only half as stupid as “Oh, my Italian Greyhound? Her name is Dayna and she’s dressed as a flying buttress.” I feel like I’ve taken crazy pills. And then in comes Holger with a steel chair in the form of a small commedia dell’arte greyhound

I, a complete plebian, was convinced until the moment Holger revealed the inspiration was in fact the great clown pagliacci that he was knitting Bagpuss

who I do put on the same level of iconicness as David Bowie, Winchester Cathedral and the average Chelsea Pensioner

I want the Maximum Respect Greyhound and the Maximum Respect Standard Poodle to kiss

which show do we think has been more ill-advised? Game of Wool or Pooch Perfect? While the latter slunk off into the realms of lost media with its tail between its legs to be forgotten by everyone except me, I think Scotland can collectively bully Game of Wool into a second series that’s just the most awkward apology tour since Katya and Seann Walsh kissed.

Ailsa was once again a stand out, this time with her dog coat inspired by the Duke of Wellington statue complete with traffic cone headpiece

I talked a little bit about how I think Ailsa was their chosen winner before they ever went in and truly I think her being declared The Biggest Knitter is maybe the only way to salvage this show in the eyes of the Shetland Knitters. Holger could win but, much like the merchants after the Act of Union 1707, I think the sensible German loses in the end.
Although I have to say Lydia is a stealth option because her lace knit Notting Hill Carnival coat was very well made, especially considering the ungenerous time limit

the coat was amazing but the headpice loses me a little bit

that’s just the halo someone wears to be the Angel Gabriel in their junior school nativity play but I’m glad to see the role going to an Italian Greyhound, just as God intended. What’s that Gabriel? What should we name the child of the God?

Luke 1:30-31.

Jump!

And now for the weekly Hell Challenge, this time the knitters were divided into three groups of three to make a mohair women’s 80s-style jumper with a mercifully provided pattern that notably came with two sleeves

however, as you can probably expect with a 10 hour time limit, they did start hacking off limbs like the Black Knight scene in Monty’s Python and the Holy Grail

the one team did have the forethought to not even attempt two full sleeves and was always going to only attempt 3/4 of the brief

always a good sign when your challenges require the contestants to work out which parts of it they can just not do. Sadly, none of them could get out of having to do the required intarsia components which turned into a nightmare for every team except Holger, Lydia and Tracy who were going for ska AND NOTHING ELSE, TRACY, STOP IT!

Holger and Tracy fighting over embellishments like two toddlers in the back back of a car with Lydia just looking to camera like a mother fighting the urge to swerve into oncoming traffic <3 <3 <3

but once they’d had to pull a 127 Hours and cut off an arm, Tracy got to force more whimsy down Holger’s throat while he sat there like the gay child in School of Rock

the judges loved the jumper though and it is delightfully stupid in a very Gem and the Holograms kind of way

they loved it so much so, the mused on how well the team must have worked together and all been on the same page about the design, causing said team to melt into giggles in the only showcase of unity they had all episode

at least some of them are having fun because this episode even made Stephanie contemplate the sweet embrace of death after the universe decided that everything Meadow touches will die

so, the Meadow Situation. She was very out of depth, especially with the intarsia element and maybe they should’ve prioritised casting people on this show with better varied abilities if something like this is coming up on episode 2. But also, *maybe* Ailsa and Stephanie weren’t particularly good team mates when they heard her say “I’m not very experienced in intarsia” and decided to let her try design A GUITAR??????

you could’ve talked her off that cliff, you two. Dipti was attempting intarsia for the first time but she at least had the sense to start with a balloon and even that ended up looking like someone’s liver

so really, nobody can sit back and pull a surprised face when Meadow’s first ever attempt at intarsia looked like she’d done it with her own teeth

they let that poor girl hang herself with a mohair noose and I feel AWFUL for her. And because Meadow had to go scream in the Panic Chamber and Wool Emporium for 30 minutes

Stephanie had to pick up some of the lost work – mostly in regards to the fact Meadow and Ailsa communicated about shoulder seams about as well as Holger and Tracy communicated about the use of sequins which is why their jumper looks a bit like it’s one of Elagabalus’s fruitier togas

I want to know if this is the vision the creators had for this show. On The Apprentice, which this show is wildly committed to emulating, you are aware that making 5 telemarketers in a trench coat suddenly create a videogame together on like 3 hours of sleep, resulting in something as insane as Artic [sic] Saviour in which Greta Thunberg saves penguins by shooting oil tycoons is a deliberate set up for failure

and you feel fine about it because they’re all assholes with terrible statement facial hair who deserve a humbling. But these knitters are *nice* people and it feels like you’re making a drop in therapy group fight over a prescription for prozac! Why are we making knitting a team sport? Who’s idea was that? Dipti would like words because if there’s one thing she wants in this world it’s to never be perceived

and while Dipti suffered in self-induced silence over her first time doing intarsia, Isaac was determined to redeem himself for last week’s botched sunset. Simon’s job in this team being to reign Isaac in before he started planning to make increasingly more obscure balloons

and I have to say, the resulting jumper was actually kind of cute in so far as a novelty jumper you wear once, get a mean comment about and relegate to the back of your wardrobe forevermore can be

rest assured, you would fully deserve the bullying you get for wearing it.

In the end, mostly off the back of the first challenge so GOD KNOWS WHY WE’RE DOING TEAM CHALLENGES, Holger becomes the Big Knitter and is thrilled with the novelty sheep badge

and unsurprisingly, Meadow is the knitter that is allowed to leave the island

leaving Dipti to check into the Panic Chamber and Wool Emporium for a night of screaming like that one scene in Midsommar.