the eternal question of this show.

This one’s for you, Yasmin Harper.

Swimming With the Stitches

In a continued reheating of Sewing Bee’s nachos, it’s Holiday Week in Tom Daley’s Shed of Misery and no holiday is complete without your handy… knitted (and/or Crocheted) swimwear

or lovingly framed shot of your abs in the dewy light of dawn

but things were looking up for the knitters because it was finally someone else’s turn to have a truly horrible time! Because you see, Tom Daley had cashed in every favour someone has ever owed him in what might be the most spectacular burning of bridges since Hubert Robert painted Fire in Rome

the almost completely untelevisable swimming costumes were going to be modelled by Tom Daley’s (assumedly now former) friends and fellow Team GB divers: Noah Williams, Jordan Houlden and Yasmin Harper

the latter of which definitely drew the shortest of the already miniscule straws by being the only woman and her body being treated like a sort of Pandora’s Puzzle Box of unknowable quantities

the brief for the Yarn-based Hobbyists (we have established they are not all knitters) was to create a glamorous swimsuit. And then about halfway through the challenge, Tom started talking about how the designs were also inspired by the contestants’ favourite holidays because they suddenly remembered the weeks are meant to be themed. The show’s going great, babes

and while it’s fairly easy to combine glamour and the likes of Venetian theatre, as Ailsa did in the one use of colour because apparently glamour = HORRIBLE NUDE YARN

it’s a little harder to intertwine glamour and the plot twist that Simon is a Disney Adult

because he was doing a pair of trunks for Noah and therefore not having to worry about how much of a bikini top Yasmin Harper needs to meet broadcasting standards, he had to make an extra accessory. His choice being the always glamorous utility belt that pairs wonderfully with the aggressive VPL

and as good as it will be at holding your holiday essentials, it did look better as Holger’s Miss Congeniality Sash

for some reason Holger’s trunks and loose mesh vest were barely shown in a full body shot – Noah Williams was apparently harder to film than an Italian greyhound having a panic attack in a barely functioning Freddie Mercury costume

if only he’d stood still in mortified fear like Yasmin did

I am willing to spend the next 7 years training as a lawyer in order to help Yasmin Harper sue this show into the ground for the horrors they subjected her to – I’m sure the Society of Very Angry Shetland Knitters will fund our case.
The above offering was from Dipti who was being inspired by the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas where she competed in a choir competition and I would like to thank her personally for providing footage of her singing with the conviction of someone who had been possessed by every Glee character all at once

as a nod to the lights of the Vegas strip, she was using silver and gold metallic yarn, which really managed to evoke glamour for Sheila and Di

it feels like a piece of feminist performance art to be looking at a woman who is so palpably uncomfortable and astrally projecting herself to a reality where none of this is currently happening to her and calling her glamorous. Carolee Schneemann, eat your Meat Joy (1964) heart out.
I genuinely feel bad about this next part but like… I can’t ignore the back of Dipti’s costume which feels like the best example of why they don’t bring in actual models for Sewing Bee’s Transformation Challenges

we’ve seen some hungry bums, but that’s a famished arse. And perhaps even more wild is that they complained more about Stephanie’s being too skimpy despite her going out of her way to make a sort of modesty flap?

do you know what this reminds me of? On Project Runway’s first season, they designed lingerie for Heidi Klum and Santino Rice concocted this trio of slutty bavarian deer (not pictured: Auf Wiedersehen stitched on the one of their bums)

but don’t worry guys, the Olympians are definitely fine with all of this, Tom Daley said so

Yasmin Harper should be allowed to slap him at least one time. As a treat.

Stephanie’s bikini inspiration never really got elaborated upon, it was sort of just generic beachy motifs like Extremely Geometric Palm Trees

but nothing was funnier this episode than Isaac being obviously prompted by a member of production hiding behind the sofa to ask Stephanie about all of her amazing holidays

and Isaac being blindsided by her then *just* talking about her marriage in the Seychelles and subsequent divorce

and yeah, her horrible bikini definitely captures the vibe of a woman trying to reclaim her Seychellois Divorce

YASMIN, I AM SO SORRY. It does get better from here, kind of, even Lydia’s which is at least not a modestly dubious two piece, definitely had some fit issues, giving Yasmin the proportions of a tin can that Di and Sheila were doing a spectacular job of ignoring while the camera zooms in on the baffling crotch stretch?????

I truly do not know why everyone went so… blah with the colours? The entire time, they’re talking to Lydia about how sexy her leotard is going to be and she’s sat there crocheting with a spectrum of colours only found in the fungal kingdom

the only instances of actual colour were Ailsa’s aforementioned cuirass for a poolside jester and Isaac’s interpretive chalk bag

god bless this man, he was almost an uncomfortable with this challenge as Yasmin was. He doesn’t do glamour and is about a single knitted cardigan away from running into the woods and declaring himself a cottagecore lesbian. So his one (1) nod to the brief was writing NRG (New River Gorge, not Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group) on the bum – GLAMOUR!

and his rock climbing glamour pants were capped off with a little man hanging off your dick

it is WILD to me that nobody brought up the absurd placement of this??????? And yet they had a whole issue with Simon’s slutty thigh corsetry

I need everyone on this show to write me a 1500 word thesis on what glamour means to them. Because I can at least see where some of them were going and honestly, Tracy’s floral embellishments were probably the closest anyone got to be actually glam

it’s a pity they’re not good, but she did also only have 12 hours to do all of this in and I applaud her for at least prioritising making sure Yasmin wasn’t slipping a nipple

it didn’t make Yasmin look any more comfortable in the swimsuit but it’s the thought that counts.

An Ill-advised Yarn-based Swimming Costume Ranking:
1. Ailsa’s Poolside Jester
2. Holger’s Unfilmable Vest
3. Lydia Winning For Being The Most Modest <3
4. Simon’s Hidden Mickey Utility Belt
5. Isaac’s Big Dick NRG
6. Tracy’s Floral Disappointment
7. Stephanie’s Seychellois Divorce Bikini
8. All The Glamour of a Depressed Gambling Addict

Deck Heads

For their Knitting Is Now A Contact Sport Challenge, the Knitters and Occasional Crocheters were split into duos with the task of creating a bespoke sling for a deckchair, a task for which they had dragged Janie Crow in for as a guest judge

her main contribution was dropping this little factoid about intarsia

it’d be a real shame if they ever forced an amature knitter to attempt it for the first time on national television…

show’s going *great*, babe

In order to create their deckchair slings, they had provided the knitters/crocheters/yarn-enjoyers with three different types of yarn – a thick corded yarn, a fine yarn and a soft tape yarn. And with Holger having made it abundantly obvious that he will not make direct eye-contact with anything chunkier than a light yarn (he’ll stretch to medium after 2 glasses of win) he immediately grabbed the Fine Yarn that was very much there specifically to screw someone over

he had seemingly forgotten that they only have 10 hours to do this in and with a concept for an intarsia cone of chips, had prioritised refinement over convenience so Tom had to come sit down with them to make Holger realise he’d fallen into the trap again

in order to get it finished and have enough time to work out how a deckchair works

they switched to a treble stitch which according to Janie Crow, professional crochet whistleblower, would give too much stretch and with their, admittedly very good looking, sling already sagging prior to having Tom lower himself into it

it was no surprise that he sank right to the ground

would the fact their deckchair is completely unfit for purpose mean they were put in last place after having usability stressed as a main factor of the judging? No, of course not and expecting consistency on this show is like Holger expecting to be able to achieve a fine knit piece of furniture every episode. Instead last place was reserved for Dipti and Stephanie for committing the crime of being too basic on a TV show predicating itself on nonsense

they did realise that their sling had a bit too much stretch, ultimately meaning they had to cut it short in order to put more tension into it

I am truly obsessed with the build-up to this moment, a gif will not do it justice so I’ve to clip the entire thing – for absolutely no reason, they’re performing like they’re in an episode of Line of Duty

Stephanie’s hushed secretive tone and the grave severity in Dipti’s voice are honestly BAFTA worthy – Vicky McClure WISHES. I need Dipti to know she’s one of the funniest people on the planet, she’s EVERYTHING to me and the fact she can’t get herself eliminated like Tantalus can’t eat or drink is perfect television. LET HER GO HOME, she just wants to make little clothes for her stuffed animals

but no, she’s trapped in her own personal Greek tragedy, doomed to always be second worst with the sweet freedom of the scottish mainland constantly just out of reach.

Simon and Ailsa probably had the best approach to the challenge. Keeping it relatively simple but embellishing it to give the feel of something more complicated is definitely the only real way to achieve success on this show

it’s impeccably neat, it really is hard to believe they had the same amount of time as Dipti and Stephanie’s happy hour rorschach test

Janie Crow, please draw me a fish. For science.

Lastly we have Tracy and Lydia, who had the idea for a Hawaiian shirt inspired design embellished with lots of 3D flowers for Tracy to redeem herself with

I love the decorative base stitch, it’s VERY pretty. They did obviously run out of time to do as many flowers as they’d initially planned. I must also once again complain about the colours, it’s so drab – but also this appears to be their yarn selection

suddenly realising why just about all the swimsuits were the colours of sensible kitchen backsplashes.

An Official Deckchair Ranking:
1. Simon and Ailsa’s
2. If I Had A Nickel For Everytime Tracy Crocheted An Ugly Flower…
3. Holger and Isaac’s Saggy Chips
4. HEATHENOUS GRANNY SQUARES

Not putting Holger and Isaac in last place for the deckchair is wilderness judging at its finest – what are we even doing? It wouldn’t have even meant sending one of them home either! They would’ve still been perfectly justified in axing Stephanie

her bikini wasn’t great and her cocktail on the deckchair was also not great for the same reasons. Stephanie going home does mean that the one eternally positive heartbeat of the show is gone so we’re officially running only on fumes and chunky knit grudges from here on out!

One thing I do think the show is doing very well is balancing out the wins, it would’ve been very easy to give Ailsa the win and her second Big Knitter Baa-dge (a name I refuse to say out loud) but instead they gave it to Lydia

after a series of Bake Off that painfully trudged along because they gave one (1) baker the win for more than half the series, it’s refreshing that the show feels like it’s at least attempting to celebrate everyone. Even if the execution of getting there is fraught with misadventure.