Game of Wool: Kids Week

Georgia (00:00): I aiming for watermelon, but then they looked like lots of knives.

Adam (00:03) I cannot deal with all things being put in mouths.

Georgia (00:06): I'm gonna be really transparent and honest right now and you might kick me out of your house.

Adam (00:16) Welcome to this week's episode of Yarn Library podcast with me, Adam Cleevely and...

Georgia (00:21): Yaaaaay! Sorry, I prepared emotionally to say "yay", but then you said "and". I'm Georgia, me Georgia Denham at Tulipurl on Instagram.

Adam (00:29) We're here to talk about Game of Wool Episode 4. And if you haven't listened before, just to make it absolutely crystal clear, we're about to reveal every spoiler possible. So if you haven't watched the episode and you plan to, maybe tune away now. Did you like Episode 4?

Georgia (00:45): Well, I think I've just, I've resolved myself that this is an entertainment program. And so when I view it with that lens, almost as if I'm not a knitter, then I enjoy myself. And no, right, that was harsh. I know I am enjoying myself. It's fun. I think I've had to compartmentalise a lot.

Adam (01:07) It's interesting, isn't it? Because I was expecting to have really deep insights when we started this podcast on techniques and all the rest of it. And actually we're going to get into some fairly fundamental stuff about is crochet a kind of knitting.

Georgia (01:20): I know.

Adam (01:21): Spoiler alert, no it's not. If you're watching this on YouTube, you might, we've managed to get them out of shot, but we have got our desk littered with microphones this week.

Georgia (01:30): Yes.

Adam (01:31): Because last week we had a total audio failure.

Georgia (01:33): Yes. So the similar issues to the week before, we thought we'd fixed it and then in fact we haven't. And it was just sort of wrong in a slightly different way, which meant that the same workarounds didn't work. But we have not one but two backup recordings and we've changed the settings again on the mic. So fingers crossed we're good to go. Having said that, we pushed and pushed to get the episode ready. And then our hosting platform let us down, unfortunately, in actually sharing the episode.

Adam (02:01) It's a real shame, Riverside's provider are supposed to be a brilliant provider of podcasting hosting services, but they totally, totally failed. We ended up having two development teams try to work on repairing our episode once it was edited. It was all edited within their app, but there we go.

Georgia (02:16): I felt bad for Adam because he'd scheduled the post saying, "Yeah, Episode 5 is up now!" And it was funny because I'd actually gone to London. I went to see Five, the boy band, on their reunion tour. I was on the underground about to arrive and got this text message from Adam saying, "Hey, are you available? The episode is not uploaded." So I was sat in the Costa Coffee next to the O2 trying to troubleshoot and figure out what was going on. But it was resolved and the episode's out now.

Adam (02:41) So we were planning to release two episodes a week, which we may be able to get back to, but for the moment, because of the audio issues, we've had the software issues, we're just going to keep it to one a week for a couple of weeks. And just, sorry if you were really looking forward to two a week, but we just, we can't quite manage it right now.

Georgia (02:57): No. And one of the things that I bring to this podcast is the fact that I am a PhD student. So I need to stay a PhD student by continuing to do my PhD, which unfortunately on two episodes a week would probably not be happening at the moment. But we will get there.

Adam (03:10) Let's move away from the absolute horror show of actually how you run a podcast and instead talk about the joyful subject of knitting!

Georgia (03:16): Crochet!

Adam (03:18) I hope it comes across that we said knitting and crochet at exactly the same time. But let's talk about, I was going to say knitting some children's costumes. Because that's what the country's best knitter is going to do. No doubt it's a knitting competition and let's get some children's costumes. Except the rule that we're going to apply for this one is that everything's got to be crocheted. The first thing they had to do was create these amazing children's costumes and it was children's costumes for fancy dress, everything had to be crocheted. It had to be sort of a main body piece, an accessory–

Georgia (03:51): Embellishments.

Adam (03:52) –and embellishments. But we basically ended up with some sort of tabard for most people, you know, a single body costume, a hat, and then something else that they were carrying. And unlike with the other competitions, we didn't have to see all of those costumes put on children and children made to stand there. Instead, there was a lovely scene, which I didn't feel there was quite enough of, of the children actually wearing the costumes, running around playing in a field. Which was delightful.

Georgia (04:15): They also said that they needed to withstand the rough and tumble. The rough and tumble of play, seeing the costumes in that kind of moment was quite, like, it was nice, it was nice. And then of course they went onto the mannequins. So in terms of like the actual doing of the challenge, I mean, what was your initial reaction when they were like, right, and you're have to crochet all of it?

Adam (04:32) I know where we are now. Like, as you said at the beginning, it's an entertainment show. It's not a knitting show. It is called the Game of Wool. I mean, interestingly, actually none of the wool that they were using was actually wool. I found out it was all 100% acrylic this week. So it's not Game of Wool, it's Game of Acrylic this week. It's not about knitters, it's knitting and crochet. But yeah, it's a beautiful challenge to do. They said, you know, I'm quoting, they said, unique, it had to be a standout design. They wanted to see lovely stitch work. They had to be crocheted only and there were three elements and they wanted best possible design and the best use of stitches.

Georgia (05:07): Wowed. They wanted to be wowed.

Adam (05:09) Last week we had Jamie Crow come on to do the judging for the crochet and I kind of would have expected that again this time because I know that the judges are knitters. They are highly proficient knitters. They're not crocheters. They're not world-famous crocheters. I was expecting a specialist crochet judge to come on, but we didn't have that.

Georgia (05:27): No, no we didn't. I was thinking children's costumes. I'm kind of close enough that I have very vivid memories of my own costumes as a child and my parents making them. So I was really connecting to it on that level as well because my mum especially, she brought her artistic and creative skills and her design skills. So my parents met at art school. My mum was doing jewellery and metalwork and 3D design and my dad was doing sculpture. And they met at a seminar on using found materials in artistic practice. I think that was like the fancy umbrella way of putting it, but really it was a seminar on finding materials from skips. So yeah, they both from different courses turned up at the seminar apparently and met there. And whenever they made things for me as a child, those skills, that material knowledge really manifested.

Adam (06:19) I can hear this coming, Georgia. You're literally just about to tell me that as a child you were dressed in stuff from skips.

Georgia (06:25): Well, there's a funny story that there's this family law thing about a cardigan. It was actually a hand knitted cardigan that was found in a skip and both of my parents, they're no longer together, separated when I was quite young, but they both would back and forth about, "No, I found that" "I found that" "No, you wanted to leave it" "No, you wanted to leave it". And it became my favourite cardigan as a teenager and I wore it all the time, had great big daisies on it. So skips and knitted jumpers. So in a way I was dressed from skips, Adam.

Adam (06:52) I'm not judging it.

Georgia (06:53): What I wanted to ask you was, what's your relationship to children's costumes? Like, have you made many?

Adam (06:59) I'm afraid, Georgia, that you have a brutal reality coming up ahead of you, which is that childhood costumes have moved on from whatever you experienced. That is not the nature of it now. And it was hinted at actually in the Cast Off episode, spoiler, where Dipti was interviewed by Tom at the end (Let's Get Knitting, 2025). And Dipti said, you know, she now had renewed confidence that she could crochet a child's costume in a relatively short period of time. And maybe that would come in handy for next World Book Day. World Book Day, and I'm sorry that there was no trigger warning ahead of that for any parents, but World Book Day is a truly difficult time of year for any parent to get through. And particularly if you're parent of more than one child, because the expectations certainly created from children by what they see other children wearing to school is so astronomically high. When I was a kid, my parents absolutely loved dressing up and they went to all sorts of fancy dress costume parties. They had fancy dress parties. I was dressed up a lot. I had a Winnie the Pooh costume once. My Winnie the Pooh costume was a red T-shirt. Like you would not get away with that. I don't think now at a World Book Day event. Children have this massive expectation set up from what other children are wearing. And a lot of that comes from, I think, the very disposable and very cheap clothing that you get on Amazon where for £10 you can have a disposable polyester nylon costume. Children can look like Harry Potter or whatever for 30 seconds, but the children expect that because that's what the other kids at school wear. And there's no suspense of belief or anything. They fully expect a full costume.

Georgia (08:38): Okay, so I think that maybe in a weird way, the height of my mother's fancy dress costumes for us as kids probably began that expectation.

Adam (08:48) If your mother's responsible for this, Georgia, I'm afraid you're about to get an awful lot of angry letters.

Georgia (08:53): So definitely not with the disposable stuff, because it was very much what we had in the house, hand-made things. She did a lot of like sewing, really inventive stuff. I mean, World Book Day, I went as the Snork Maiden from like the Moomin Trolls with a full Snork Maiden mask. And it was like on a headband with glue gunned flowers, paper flowers that she'd made around like the Snork Maidens from Midsummer Moomins. Moomin Midsummer? The summer one, because I love the Snork Maiden. And then I had a gorgeous like white nightie on as well. And so I was like floating around and I was the Snork Maiden. So I went to school without school uniform for primary. Yeah, me too. And you know, if you imagine you've got school uniform and then you have to elevate to having a non-uniform day. So when you've got no uniform, you elevate to fancy dress. The fancy dress is pretty frequent and we had a lot of fancy dress parties, big on Halloween, all that kind of thing. I mean, there was one time where I got one line in the school play. And I think wires got crossed and I came home and said, "Mummy, Mummy, I get to be a donkey in this play. And I had to sing one line." The next day I went to school with a donkey costume.

Adam (10:02) Amazing.

Georgia (10:03): I think the teacher called my mum or went to speak to her in the playground to apologize because my mum had literally, I woke up the next morning and she'd like hand drawn this donkey head.

Adam (10:12): Incredible. I mean, that is the nightmare. mean, but that's the thing. As a parent, your children say, by the way, I'm meant to go to school tomorrow dressed as a Roman centurion, and I'm supposed to be carrying behind me the whole of my army. And by the way, I also need chariots and horses.

Georgia (10:28): We had a weird thing on Roman's day at school where, I mean, I was away from the curve. I went as Athena, which is obviously a Greek goddess, but who cares? And there was a weird thing where all the people who dressed as rich Romans, they had to be served by the people who dressed as slaves.

Adam (10:44) That's weird.

Georgia (10:45): And so basically it was like, well, why are you possibly dressing as a slave? Because then you have to serve food on the gym mats and we were all just like lounging. And then the people who are dressed as slaves had to serve as grapes.

Adam (10:57): Well, I have never knitted or crocheted a-

Georgia (11:00): Sorry, I've got so many fancy dress stories on there.

Adam (11:04) We'll have a special episode just for your fancy dress story.

Georgia (11:06): I mean, they are pretty great.

Adam (11:07): It's interesting hearing those knitters and crocheters talk about whether or not they had knitted stuff for their kids before. And Lydia, for example, I think said she hadn't, and this was the first time, but it was delightful that she went and said to her daughters, what shall I create? And they said like a lion costume and they drew it out for her. That was a beautiful.

Georgia (11:23): Did they? thought that Tom was joking about how the drawing wasn't very good.

Adam (11:29) Od sorry if I missed that. The problem is taking notes and looking up at the TV. Oh my God, I'm sorry if I've offended Lydia. I didn't actually see the drawing. Oops. Sorry. There's no recovery from that, is there?

Georgia (11:41): Well, I did enjoy Tom's roarmper, because it was a romper. Roarmper. I enjoyed that little pun. That was good. I did find, though, the fact that they said that the lion costume wasn't original. Fair enough. Like, lions pretty, pretty common. They did say, she put a spin on it. But technically, there's probably more foxes in the world than lions.

Adam (12:01) In fact, probably, I'd bet on that. Also, there's definitely more zebras by number than lions.

Georgia (12:07): I do wonder how niche these animals need to be to be original and then also recognisable. I think there's an interesting balance between, we've gone for a fox, which is a bit more off the beaten track than say, I'm going to be a lion. But how are we balancing these expectations?

Adam (12:23) By all means go for a tardigrade or axolotl. Absolutely fine.

Georgia (12:28): I don't even know what that is. I know what an axolotl is, but a tardigrade?

Adam (12:32) Yeah, tardigrade is a tiny little organism. Well, that's a little Google trip for you afterwards.

Georgia (12:37): Okay, later, later. No tangents. Soz.

Adam (12:39) Otherwise we're gonna be here for a while. It was just clear, so crystal clear that these poor knitters were being asked to do a substantial crochet thing. I could see that Simon was so stressed by it. I really, really felt for him. I mean, I know Simon and I don't know whether that caused me to give, there was a more empathetic feeling there, but I was really, really stressed for him.

Georgia (13:06): Can just say that we'd recorded a fair few episodes before I realized that you actually knew some of these people because I went on Holger's Instagram and like one of the only videos on his page was your video and–

Adam (13:19) I get everywhere.

Georgia (13:20): Yeah you do! And so then I thought you know I felt somewhat misled. I felt somewhat misled.

Adam (13:27): I need to divulge my Rolodex to you, just explain exactly who I've had interactions with everywhere.

Georgia (13:33): I'm here, lusting after Holger. You didn't even tell me that you knew him. He did follow me on Instagram though.

Adam (13:38) Ooh, there we go. I know. I wonder if he still follows me. I don't know.

Georgia (13:44): Well he's following me.

Adam (13:45): I've only been nice about him. But we love Simon too.

Georgia (13:47): Yes, we love Simon too. Yes, we talking about Simon. Sorry, I just can't help myself. Okay, so yes, the mace. I mean, they made a point in the editing on various points of talking about Simon reaching the limits, the extremities of his crochet stitch knowledge, his repertoire. They asked knitters to go on the show. So how much crochet repertoire do you need?

Adam (14:13) I completely agree. If you'd been through the application process, you'd see that they were looking for knitters. It was very heavily a knitting thing. We know that when people went to sit the application test that they were tested on crochet skills as well. But I would never have imagined from the information they put out a year ago that there were going to be whole tasks that were exclusively crochet like that. And also I feel like I'm not a crocheter. I can crochet, but I'm not a crocheter. If you're a crocheter, you're listening to this and you watch the episode, I bet you are so upset by the lack of diversity of stitches that were on display because crochet has such versatility and such variety. As Simon basically said, that he could do a double and a treble or in the US a single and a double. And that was basically it. And that's what he was trying to make the costume out of. He did a brilliant job. he did at the limit of his abilities, he did the very best he could possibly do. And he was second from the bottom basically.

Georgia (15:20): Holger, Fox costume, adorable. They love the tail. I also love the tail.

Adam (15:25) Holger's wonderful crochet there really hinged on a few key items. The shaping of the tail and the way that the white and the brown diagonal striped at the end of the tail into each other, that was magical. That was beautiful craftsmanship there.

Georgia (15:41): The buttons.

Adam (15:42): The buttons were beautiful and I feel like the brushed whiskers he did on the side of the fox–

Georgia (15:50): I didn't notice that!

Adam (15:51) –that sort of facial, the way that they sort of fluffed out, he'd brushed the yarn. I felt that was a bit of a throwback to Ailsa's techniques. But that was brilliant. Pair of trousers with a single strap? I mean, that wasn't so, that's not original and unique, but...

Georgia (16:06): But it was a beautiful design in the sense that it felt like an original take on a fox where you could very clearly see it was a fox, but it's show don't tell. Like he didn't have to have this, you know, fox face and quite literally a whole fox body. It was gestured enough through this minimal, really clear, beautiful shape and line. And I think the color choice as well was excellent. Isaac's, right? If that had gone wrong. I think he could have been on the chopping board, aside from the fact that he did very well in the second challenge. And I'm not, this is not a criticism because I loved Isaac so much. It was adorable.

Adam (16:41) I wasn't such a fan of it.

Georgia (16:42): I just, could imagine like little Isaac in it.

Adam (16:43): That's true. That's an interesting way putting it. Could you have seen the little versions of themselves in those costumes?

Georgia (16:53): Yeah! Lovely explorer Isaac. And maybe I'm a bit soft about it as well because I just this morning finished a really lovely book. It's called House on the Cerulean Sea or by the Cerulean Sea. TJ Clune (2021), I think, is the author. I'll put it in the show notes. Really, I thoroughly recommend this book. It's a beautiful story about magical children, but actually it's really about neurodiverse children and about people being different. And it's a beautiful book. But in that book they all dress up in explorer outfits and go on adventures and so I just felt really like oh it's one of the little little neurodivergent children and the magical children in these little these little costume it's so nice!

Adam (17:39) Amazing.

Georgia (17:40): I think if it had not been beautifully executed I could see it tipping over–

Adam (17:46): Well, and he was one of the few as well to exhibit a couple of slightly different stitches to give a really different texture on his because he does have more experience crocheting. He's one of the team that does.

Georgia (17:57): Spike stitch. Have you heard of spike stitch?

Adam (17:58) I hadn't heard of spike stitch, but then I'm not a crocheter. There are in terms of individual stitches, there are so many more that you can do with crochet than you can with knitting. I mean, knitting, essentially everything's a variant on a knit and a purl, isn't it? I mean, you can do some very complicated things, but essentially. There's a much bigger repertoire to go with.

Georgia (18:19): A side thought an alternative perspective on this whole crochet-knitting-gate situation on the mixture of the two. Whilst I 95% am like this is not acceptable that they're mixing them up to this degree and creating this impression that they are the same thing or that crochet is somehow a subcategory of knitting, there's a really great video I saw earlier from you said Laura Gracie but the Laura Grace (TheLauraGracee, 2025), amazing crochet Instagram person and so seeing her talk about from the crochet perspective of it's not really fair to us. And I found that quite refreshing because I didn't want it to come across as when we have these conversations that we're somehow being snobby about the fact that crochet is involved in knitting. But it's nothing like that.

Adam (19:04) God no, it's absolutely not. It was in fact, it was her video which made me do my video last night at time of recording because I saw that and I really felt for her and she was the person I had in mind when I created my video to say the Game of Wool have sent me a pair of knitting needles. Obviously they turn out to be crochet hooks, but that's exactly right because I think it is becoming farcical. Interestingly, immediately after Episode 4, so I get a lot of texts from people immediately giving me their show notes and I love it and it's fascinating to see what people think.

Georgia (19:36): Our group chat, was popping off.

Adam (19:38) But my mum was the first one to call me and she immediately called me and said, "Well, I really like this. Now it's getting going." And I think that my mum isn't a crafter. So that, you know, the fact that my mum is really getting into it now is probably demonstrating the fact that, you know, this is, this really isn't a show for people who are really into their craft. You have to be relaxed and away from, you have to really be happy not to get caught up in any detail.

Georgia (20:05): Okay, so where I kind of meant to start this tangent, apologies, we'll go back to the others in a moment. So I said I was like 95% not okay with this. The 5% of me, I think I'm getting interested in learning to crochet. You're not– Because I think they are demonstrating a certain like duality of skill, as in that they're showing and demonstrating how actually having both strings to your bow is, is a– your face! Having both strings to your bow is a benefit. When I was thinking about older patterns and where they call for, crochet this neckline or do some kind of crochet, we talked about it in past episodes. And also just, I'm kind of getting to a point where, if I am around crocheters all the time or I am talking about knitting a lot, then having some basic knowledge and awareness of that adjacent skill, this is not to say that they are the same thing. It's not to give into that mentality. But I do think that I am warming to the idea of actually, I think it would make a lot of sense for me to have at least a basic understanding of the way that this works.

Adam (21:20) I totally agree. No, do. think, I think you should try everything because also crochet may suit you better than knitting. Unless you've tried it, you won't know. What I will say is of all the people I've ever talked to, most people prefer one over the other. We talk about bistitchuality and people who pursue that equally. There are very, very few. Most people will fall back to being predominantly crochet or predominantly knitting. And you do need to try everything before you know which one you like.

Georgia (21:51): Of what I know of it, even just aesthetically, this is not to say that crochet isn't beautiful, but just on the level of draftiness, I'm not a big fan of holes in my clothing. I'm wearing a machine knitted, don't get too excited. This jumper I've got on today does have some lacy holes. I've got a thermal T-shirt, long sleeve top underneath, because I cannot bear the draftiness of having like lacy stuff.

Adam (22:18) I'm gonna stick up the crochet is here because there are ways not to have holes in crochet.

Georgia (22:21): Well we saw that with the beautiful Isaac's thing. You know, there are ways to do that, but then the fabric maybe gets too dense and then the texture of it and it's very knobbly.

Adam (22:31) Also, it depends on fibre choice. I mean, I'm literally re-knitting a hat for myself at the moment because where I chose it with one fibre, it wasn't, does become a bit drafty. I don't have a lot of hair left and unfortunately I feel the wind in my head now. So I'm re-knitting it and incorporating a double strand of mohair because the mohair puffs out and fills that little space and stops the wind coming through. Like there are ways, yes, okay, crochet definitely is a little bit more holy than knitting, but there are ways round that as a crafter as you become expert with your materials as well.

Georgia (23:01): Also you've got to stab into it from my understanding. I've heard people talk before about how with crochet you've actually got to like look at what you're doing.

Adam (23:08) Again, I think that's–

Georgia (23:09): An experience thing or is that like–

Adam (23:11): I think it's an experience. It's a funny thing about the human eye, what you're actually seeing, like it does need to pop up and down and look at things. You think when you're in an orchestra, you need to look at your notes the whole time and the conductor the whole time, but there is a way to do both. And it's the same thing with knitting and crochet. I think once you get to a certain level, although yes, you might be looking at your knitting the whole time, you could also be looking at the TV the whole time. And it's the same thing with crochet. I mean crochet, yes, you're definitely stabbing a fairly precise point, but I think just like with knitting you probably get used to exactly where that point is.

Georgia (23:41): I wonder if I've just avoided it as well because we've talked before about different motivations– Oh, Rufus! We talked about different motivations for skills and my brain is stretched in lot of ways and I don't necessarily always want to stretch it by learning new things all the time. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I need that sort of exfoliation for my brain and my hands. Give me some stockinette and you know maybe give me some some feather and fan and that's my lot for the now.

Adam (24:10) But you started learning stranded color work within the last year, like six months ago or something. Wasn't that your first go at that?

Georgia (24:16): I mean, I did the intarsia zebra thing.

Adam (24:20) Intrasia is not stranded color work though.

Georgia (24:21): No, but as in like in terms of skill stuff, I know it's not. I had done it earlier, but was not something you saw because I knitted a twiddle mitt thing for my grandmother when she was poorly.

Adam (24:32): Okay. Well, I'm going to pick another skill that I'm going to guess you haven't done. So let's go with entrelac that you haven't tried entrelac yet. There we go. The look on your face definitely says you haven't knitted an entrelac, but the next time you come across that and you think, do you know what? Adam mentioned that and I hadn't done it. So I'm going to try it. Like the alternative to that is why didn't you pick up a crochet hook and give a give crochet? Because it's exactly the same thing. If you want to learn something, then that's one reason for doing a craft because you want to teach yourself something. Another is I want to zone out, want to hypnotise myself or whatever.

Georgia (25:02): I'm gonna be really transparent and honest right now and you might kick me out of your house. Okay? Please, please try and remember that I am– okay, this is hard for me. I don't think I've ever admitted this to you. There are lots of reasons for this and we can unpack it, but I've never knitted like in a pattern. I've done little swatches of it. I've never done cables.

Adam (25:29) I was going to say cables and I thought I've never seen you knit cables but surely you've done cable.

Georgia (25:34): I know in principle how they work and I've done little bits and bobs of them. It kind of goes down to aesthetic motivations. When I've been interested in a certain pattern, I thought, that would be great to add to my wardrobe. It's not that I don't want cabled stuff. I'd rather try and– Rufus! In terms of my scale of, I'd rather have this or I'd rather have this jumper. It's just not something that has been on my list. My list of the next thing I wanted to do. And then that's gone on for quite a while.

Adam (26:02) I just, I just don't think any of that matters like craft is there to do we're in the luxurious position where craft serves us as something that we want to do that is why you and I and most other people craft it isn't isn't for livelihood it isn't because it is the only way to clothe ourselves it is a tremendously luxurious position but because you're in that position totally up to you what you don't like cable aesthetic–

Georgia (26:27): You've changed your tune. You've changed your tune. There's a reason I was scared to tell you that.

Adam (26:33) What I said before that's meant that you should have to cables. You didn't say, can't knit cables because they look too difficult. That would have been a red flag.

Georgia (26:44): But in a way, I suppose it's looked like, that's going to be a sort of a set up, a skill set up cost. That is too difficult for me to have the bandwidth to engage properly with this. I just mean that I objectively, on the go and don't pay attention to what I'm doing a lot of the time.

Adam (27:06) In which case knitting cables is a terrible, terrible idea.

Georgia (27:09): Exactly.

Adam (27:10): Well, I say that I'm knitting a cabled hat at the moment, which I'm really enjoying, but it's one that I've designed myself and the cable is so simple and repetitive that you don't need a pattern for it. And, you know, once you get into it again, once I have already, I know you're looking disgusted at me. Once I've mastered cables.

Georgia (27:27): You know what I'm actually imagining? I'm thinking about all the cable things I've seen you make. My brain imagined Adam in a cape as the superhero Mr. Cable. Yeah, like Super Cable, Cable Man. Cable Man!

Adam (27:38) The cable guy.

Georgia (27:44): Cable guy. And so now I really want to draw a superhero Adam that's like Cable Man.

Adam (27:50) No, I think you should crochet me one.

Georgia (27:53): Can you crochet cables?

Adam (27:54) You can crush her cables, yeah.

Georgia (27:55): See I need I need a knowledge of cables and I need knowledge of crochet because I wouldn't have asked you that question.

Adam (28:00): Here we go. But I mean, the great thing about craft is you can take it where you want to. My objection to people saying, "Oh I can't do that" is when they're saying that because they are being defeatist about their own ability. That's where I go with that. You haven't knitted cables because they don't spark joy in you. You don't massively care for their aesthetic or whatever it is. Most of craft is there for us as a luxury that we can pick and choose the bits that we want to do.

Adam (28:27): Right. I want to come onto a side rant here, which I really wanted to get into. Which, because one of the other objections that I've got about people commentating on the Game of Wolves is people saying that they don't like the fact that it is timed and that these people have so little time to do knitting. They feel craft should be what you want it to be. Now, everyone that signed up for that, everyone that's on the show fully wanted to be in a competition where they absolutely knew there were going to be timed tasks. I also totally recognize that there are people out there who think that crochet and knitting and crafting is solely to be done quietly by yourself at a gentle pace. And it's not that those two things are mutually exclusive. And it reminded me of a beautiful passage that my cousin once wrote. And that's what I'm gonna dig out for you. This is where the segue goes. Most people wouldn't know this. So there's no reason why you'd know this. My cousin is an incredible chef. He's a restaurateur and he runs a restaurant in London called Bocca di Lupo. He wrote a recipe book many years ago and inside it, there are loads of insights into how he runs the kitchen and all sorts (Kenedy, 2017). There's a recipe in there, which is really interesting because it deals with his struggle of running an Italian restaurant where although he's got many parts of Italian heritage to come into it, he wasn't born and raised in Italy. And yet he's working in an Italian restaurant, he runs it and he has Italian chefs that work there. And this, when I came across all of those comments online about knitting shouldn't be done quickly, blah, blah, blah. This is the passage that came to mind. And thank you, Jake, for this. I'm going to read you what he says about his caponata recipe, which is sourced from Sicily.

Food is an emotive subject, especially for Italians. Everyone has their own way of doing things whilst everyone else's is not worse, but wrong. I made the mistake, when Bocca di Lupo first opened of asking our Sicilian waiters (we had four at the time) what they thought of my caponata. They all detested it.

"You can't put celery in caponata – it's disgusting – but at least the vegetables are nice and chunky."

"You idiot, the vegetables should be small and combined – but I like that you serve anchovies on top of it, like my mother."

"You never put anchovies in caponata – Luca's mother is a [baa]! And there are... And where are the pine nuts?"

"Pine nuts? Imbecile! Jacob ha fatto il bravo [did well] without pine nuts and of course it has to have celery.. Oh, but you're right, this is gross. There aren't any peppers!"

I think in fact they came close to killing each other that day over a plate of caponata. Voices grew loud, chests puffed out and body language became threatening. I felt like crying, but to put an end to the argument by saying:

"This is the way I make caponata. And everyone else is wrong..."

Adam (39:19): And I just think that's a perfect, perfect example. It is exactly that. That is exactly what is happening here in so many ways. Everyone is so passionate that their way of doing it is the way that they've been taught, they've been shown, their mother did it that way. And that's what's going on. And it's the same with this caponata recipe. And people are just upset because they're seeing it being presented in different ways. And that's– And that's really difficult for them to stomach. And that's what, when it comes to the speed knitting thing, people get really upset about it because they're like, well, I don't knit because of speed. Some people do and that's fine.

Georgia (31:56): And there's different levels of this. I've thought about it like that. Like when you put something on a national scale and you expose it for like literally millions of people to see, of course you're going to look at it and go, oh no, that's not how you should do it. It's like the Devon Cornwall scone debate.

Adam (32:09) Yeah, is it jam or cream first?

Georgia (31:10): Yeah, exactly. So it ultimately is a cultural preference and an individual preference, a preference of a certain region. People have their logic for different reasons.

Adam (32:21): We're off on a way tangent here into food, but my favourite food author and food writer is Felicity Cloake because when she writes recipes up and she has this series in the Guardian newspaper, for many, many years, she would research five or 10 different top recipes for something. She would write out about all of those different recipes. And then she'd say why she chose her recipe based on all of those things. "I've done this. If you want it to be heavier, then lean this way. If you want it to be lighter, lean that way. You know, if you want more of these flavors." So she give you all the pointers, but then say, this is mine. It's the same thing with Jake's. I love the honesty of saying, I am making my own version of what works for me. And this is where it comes from.

Georgia (33:03): Yeah, this is so true. I have the same thing with borscht. My husband's got a really, really interesting cultural heritage. He was born in Hungary to say Russian parents, but really USSR raised parents. His dad's Siberian and his mom was from, I mean, the nearest place you'd know probably would be Vladivostok. like all the way on the Trans-Siberian Express. And you could say a displaced Ukrainian community that, you know, historically generations before had moved all the way out there or had been moved out there with the promise of like populating the East. So there's little quirks where when she swears, she swears in Ukrainian because everyone in her street spoke Ukrainian or some of the recipes that she has where she might think of them as being Russian or being Soviet are actually Ukrainian. And when I decided to make borscht once, yeah, she doesn't live in this country so she didn't taste it. It's fine. So I made borscht. Dima liked it. Dima also makes amazing borscht. But I think I looked at the Guardian article, it might have even been by Felicity, and it was talking through these different approaches and different things you can do. And we don't really eat meat and we don't cook it at the house. So mine didn't have meat in. And my mother-in-law's response to this was, "it can't be borscht, you know, there's no meat in it." And she wasn't meaning to be disrespectful, but it was just that there was a total expectation that there would obviously be meat in this, in this soup, but then there's lots of different places in Eastern Europe make different kinds of borscht. So mine is sort of like a bit of a combination of Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian borscht styles. And I basically just resolved that it's my borscht. If they enjoy it, they enjoy it. And if they don't, then they don't.

Adam (34:45) Exactly. And that's what this very much comes down to, like what works for you as an individual preference. And when it comes down to what craft you choose that works well for you, whether it's cables, whether it's entrelac, intarsia, doesn't matter whether you want to crochet or knit. Like fundamentally, it's just a joyous thing that you find it and make it what you want. The thing that these competitors have been afforded is the opportunity to compete under timed conditions in this very surreal experiment to find Britain's greatest... now they call it knitter but I really am struggling to get those words out past my lips anymore.

Georgia (35:19): So timing wise, what I was thinking about was when they had these six hours to go, and they have lots of challenges where they say, you've got half an hour to go and people go, gosh, I just, I think because I've got ADHD, when that happened, I just assumed, they've not looked at their watch because I frequently don't look at my watch and then find out that, no, actually 55 minutes have gone on the recording. And so I realized in that moment, I thought, wait, do they not have a clock? I don't know.

Adam (35:47) They must have clocks all I mean I imagine that place is like a therapist office, you know where you have a thousand clocks that are just you can't see it, the cameras can't see it, but there are a thousand clocks planted around there.

Georgia (35:58): This is what I wondered though, is it part of the show and part of the drama that they don't tell them and they give them timings and that's why you see everyone go, "Oh no!"

Adam (36:08) Do you think it's genuine that people are just like, "Oh, goodness, I didn't even realise it was..."

Georgia (36:11): I that's why people don't work time because then when they find out the time, then they're like, "Oh God, I'm really far behind!" But they only realize that once they find out the time. So I'm wondering if...

Adam (36:20) You've been on the game of world. You know who I'm talking to. Slip me a DM and or just WhatsApp me and tell me the answer. We want to know where.

Georgia (36:27): We protect our sources.

Adam (36:28): Absolutely. Were there clocks in the room? Well, the other thing about the timing was in the interview that came out with Dipti afterwards. Dipti said that she wouldn't go to the toilet for as long as possible during the episodes because toilet time was lost crochet and knitting time.

Georgia (36:44): That stresses me out. So I have endometriosis and have a really long, awful history of chronic UTIs. And I've had that little note in my planner since I was a child saying I'm allowed to go to the toilet at any time. And all kinds of situations now where you hear in schools, people aren't allowed to go to the toilet. I'm so glad I'm not having to battle with that kind of environment. And so if I was in that situation, I wouldn't be able to do that. I mean, we had Meadow a couple of weeks ago saying that she was on her period and like she needed to take breaks.

Adam (37:15) Yeah, it's difficult, isn't it? Because it's a different thing when you're going from a competition like in baking where it might be a couple of hours up to something which is 12 hours continuous because there are bodily functions that have to happen with it. I mean, you need to eat within 12. I would need to eat. Some people might be able to manage that's maybe part of my problem. But–

Georgia (37:33): It's like when Kim Kardashian goes to the Met Gala and she's just like, "Yeah, I don't drink anything because I can't get out of this outfit, so I can't pee." I just watched one episode where she was like, "But yeah, if I have to go to the toilet, I'm just going to have to stand and pee and I'll get my sister to like dab up my leg."

Adam (37:55): Jesus.

Georgia (37:56): Yeah, so they just don't drink anything because they can't get in and out.

Adam (37:59) I mean it's people's choice what they do with their own bodies and how they exist. I personally would not give up those level of bodily functions in order to be able to do those things. But then we're all different.

Georgia (38:10): Yeah, I mean, people with their wedding dresses, I hear people all the time where they, you know, have to get like all the bridesmaids to come and hold the dress up. My wedding dress is great. It was like, you know, my name's Tulipurl on Instagram. It was basically an upside down tulip. It had this gorgeous like, not slit in the front, but like opening. And it was so practical that I punted in it.

Adam (38:32) That is practical.

Georgia (38:33): Have you seen the, have you seen the pictures? It's got, it has like a full on train and I basically like bustled it up. So there was a bustle underneath and I full on punted in my wedding dress.

Adam (38:43) Excellent. Only in Cambridge.

Georgia (38:45): Only in Cambridge. It was the most Cambridge wedding ever. Ailsa, great.

Adam (38:48) Made in zebra costume, I mean, in knitting terms, it looked like lots of short rows to create the different thickness.

Georgia (38:53): She measured the height of the stitches. So it was different stitches and that was what was creating it.

Adam (39:00) Yeah, I don't know what's really different about that than doing a gauge swatch. I mean, that really just sounds like knowing how big your stitches are, which is what–

Georgia (39:07): But then combining them, they were saying that was the clever thing of basically having done gauge swatches, knowing what the different widths and shapes were of that, and then combining them next to each other in different colours to create that shape.

Adam (39:21) I suppose that's clever, also if you've done pattern design, you will know that that's what you do. Because where you combine different stitches, different stitches have different gauge, and so you have to do that.

Georgia (39:32): Of course, but doing that in a way that looked like a zebra striped, I thought was pretty cool.

Adam (39:36) It was beautiful. And also the detailing on the eyes of that zebra was particularly perfect. She just, she absolutely nailed every aspect of those eyes. You know, she picked out eyeshadow. That's the detail, which you could see the judges absolutely were after.

Georgia (39:51): Okay, so the only two we've not really covered. Who haven't we covered? Tracy. Bumblebee costume. Great. Are we original yellow black stripes? My husband literally said, "just remember to be nice, okay?" When I left the house this morning. Don't try and tame me. Okay, so the hair curling bands, I'm trying to think how to describe it. Spongy cylinders of dense foam with a wire down the middle that you would wrap up sections of your hair, and then you bend the top of the band. And so then you leave it in, it dries, and then you take it out and your hair's all ringlet-y. These bumblebee wings that she had, it was too heavy, so it pulled the dress away from the child. I thought this was a really great example of an idea of, "Oh yeah, I'll use something bendy and wire and very optimistic. I'll shape it into whatever shape I want." The thing is, the hair curling band, really the bendiness is coming from the wire. And so the heaviness is coming from the foam being especially dense because it's not supposed to be absorbent for the wetness. And also that wire is designed to be thick enough that it will hold its shape when you wrap it around and you bend it and it will stay in place. And when you're doing like a children's costume where it's not got to bend in and out of position, you don't need necessarily those same material principles, right? Like you don't need those same material things.

Adam (41:17) Absolutely.

Georgia (41:18): And there was something about the fact that it was wire. Seeing her reach for something that was familiar to her, like, hair-cutting bands. Going back to my childhood costumes, right? Both my dad and my mum, in their own craft stuff, have a lot of experience of working with metal. So my dad did a lot of casting and still does, and works with cutlery now and molding and casting for industry. And my mum was a jeweller. So both of them had a lot of experience with metals and wire. And the amount of wire that ended up being in my childhood costumes, you know, they'd always like bend over and safely and all that kind of stuff. But it really did make me think the differences between like actually we're talking about parents who had the material awareness of how those properties worked. They would choose the wire that would work well for the job.

Adam (42:06) If you're allowed to use some structural reinforcement, then that was completely inappropriate. A coat hanger would have been the right thing to do. It wouldn't necessarily have been the right thing to do, but it would have been an awful lot better. And that's, you know, I have reached for a coat hanger a number of times on World Book Day morning just to get something into the right shape and to be able to hold it in place. Because coat hanger wire is, it'll do. It's not too heavy. You can fix it in place.

Georgia (42:30): You could argue, okay, it's not going to be safe for kids, but it kind of goes back to the fire thing, sort of. Last week we were talking about fire being safe for kids and kids being around fire. Actually, if you definitely make sure that that wire is safe and safely wound off, it doesn't have any harsh edges on it. Or if you bought a costume for a supermarket and you bought fairy wings or that has wire in it.

Adam (42:54): Yeah, absolutely.

Georgia (42:55): Okay, Dipti, crayon. Were you familiar with the book?

Adam (43:00): Yes.

Georgia (43:01): See, I was as well, because one time I got lost in Waterstones and then ended up perusing in the children's section. I was feeling particularly broody that day.

Adam (43:08) Oh this is a recent story. This isn't a child–

Georgia (43:09): Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I did not have these books. It's a new landscape of books these days. In that book, not all the crayons are orange. I think there was something about it all being orange. It was like throwback to Ailsa's traffic cone. And also as soon as she said, "It won't look like a child anymore, cause it's just going to be a crayon." It reminded me at school where we had a bin that was shaped like a crayon, to encourage people to go and use the bin like you get the hippo bins and crayon bins and I thought I don't think that's going to be very practical because I remember we had to move those bins and they just sort of tumbled around and yeah it was a bit too long it wasn't super flexible and malleable for say rough and tumble of play, not super ergonomic and also that neatening up the stitches.

Adam (43:53) Serious thoughts on neatening up the stitches, but I mean overall on the concept I think what she wanted to do was create a pure cylinder to make a crayon shape. And if you want to create that pure cylinder as she said with no shaping, again, this is a place where wire would be useful if you had some hoops and you have hoops in dresses and stuff to keep the shape right and that's what that that crayon costume really needed to keep that cylindrical shape because when it was placed on the child obviously it starts collapsing to the shape of the child and

And that's where as you get to the top, you got the massive gape on the back and you also got it falling off the shoulder because it either needs shaping or it needed no hoops to make it a cylinder and then being attached to a child.

Georgia (44:35): I just had a thought about how you could take that concept, which is a great concept, and you could design it in a bit more of a unique and creative way. Like we saw with Simon last week where he had that sort of utility belt. What if you were to have, rather than a whole body crayon situation, you had a pair of shorts where each of the bottom of the shorts or a skirt looked like the bottom of the crayon in the sense that it had the black banding, and then a little color. So you just have to do a little skirt or a little pair of shorts, right? And then you had that sash and in it were different multicolored crayons. You'd get to incorporate all these different colors and you could still have the top of the crayon as a hat. I think that there were different ways to do it it was almost a bit obvious that we like, okay, we're gonna put this child in a big crayon cylinder.

Adam (45:26) Yeah, it wasn't at the level that everyone else was performing at.

Georgia (45:29): No, that's where things started to unhinge.

Adam (45:32): Unravel.

Georgia (45:33): Unravel.

Adam (45:33) So the second challenge was that they had to create wall hangings for children's bedrooms. This, this fascinated me just from a maths point of view there were seven of them and they were going to be split into teams of three and four. Cute game that they came up with where someone draws the head, you fold the piece of paper over, the next person draws the body, you fold the piece of paper over. You folded a piece of paper over Georgia.

Georgia (45:53): Yeah I did!

Adam (45:54): Is that what we're doing?

Georgia (45:55): Yeah, we are. Let's talk about it first and then we'll do our fun little exchange.

Adam (45:59) So in principle, yet again, they've come up with a really interesting novel challenge that no one is ever going to do in the real world. Why you're going to create a wall hanging for children where children are going to have to reach up two meters in the air to be able to-

Georgia (46:15): That's what I was thinking! like the interactive elements two meters in the sky? That's not very safe.

Adam (46:21) Yeah, I don't really understand. I am very surprised by the finishing details on all of their works. I am so surprised that no one was doing basically a background in garter stitch with an I-cord edge. Like I was screaming at the television. Why had no one done that? I found it absolutely infuriating. That was my biggest take home from that. No one seemed to finish the edges properly. That just drove me nuts.

Georgia (46:50): The weird lack of forethought about how they actually were going to join it up together and balance things out. And as much as maybe cream wasn't the most exciting color, that other team where they had three people, they made this character creature where the background was cream, kind of boring, but the cohesion that came with that, so great. And admittedly the other group were like, no, because one's going to be like the undersea and one's going to be sand and one's going to be the sky. There just wasn't enough cohesion and as well having so Dipti decided to crochet her section which just did not not link up with the other ones in terms of getting an approximate gauge. The other group having that same background colour they kind of had a reliable-ish gauge.

Adam (47:38) I mean that would have been easier to gauge swatch quickly and match up together.

Georgia (47:42): I think it's just it looked like an objectively like a very strong team. So I really didn't expect it to go the way it did with a three person team. So we had Ailsa, Isaac and Tracy. Did you notice that actually there was a nice sort of mirroring in the shapes in that the head was a triangle and little skirt at the bottom was also a triangle?

Adam (48:00) Yeah. The shapes, so we should describe that one a little bit in more detail, I think. The winning one was the team of three. They had a nice clean, cream-coloured background, as Georgia was saying. And it was just based on shapes. It had a charming, upside-down, equilateral triangle face. It was a childish drawing as well. Like, that was the charming thing about it. It came across in that sort of whimsical, child-throwing-shapes-together kind of way. It didn't seem to have a lot of interactive elements on it.

Georgia (48:26): I did wonder about what's the difference between sensory and interactive because if something's sensory then you need to interact with it in order for it to manifest its sensory properties. I mean maybe I'm just being very specific about that but I did think like tying the shoelaces that seems pretty interactive to me.

Adam (48:49) I would also say those shoelaces, for me, when I was teaching my children to tie shoelaces, that was not a long enough shoelace for children to be able to practice with.

Georgia (48:59): We had the little pulley arms. Yeah. That was cool.

Adam (49:02) I tell you what the difference is between sensory and interactive and it is entirely scope with which to discriminate and judge people in the way that you want to be able to get rid of one team over another. I'm sorry, am I getting too sceptical about this now?

Georgia (49:16): It's like the other week with the deck chair thing where like they didn't want to put Holger and Isaac in bottom because it just wouldn't have really lined up with who needed to go home. So they didn't lose.

Adam (49:27) Even though they made the one that didn't actually work.

Georgia (49:29): Exactly.

Georgia (49:30): Okay. Shall we?

Adam (49:32) And for those that can't see, whatever reason if you're listening to the podcast, we're going to play our own little game of invent your monsters.

Georgia (49:38): Yes, so I don't know if this game has an actual name. If you do know what this is actually called or you had a word for it, then please let me know or let us know in the comments or email. Email us at podcast@yarnlibrary.co.uk. [It's called Beautiful Corpse.]

Adam (49:52) This is a heritage game, Georgia. I hope you're not going to be disrespecting the origins of this craft.

Georgia (49:58): So I used to love playing this when I was little. I loved it. Really, really loved it. So effectively, you fold a piece of paper and then you have, say one person has to do the head at the top and then the next person will do the torso and then the trousers or the bottoms, the legs and then the feet. Yeah, it's just really fun. And I thought that we could have a little go and I've got two pieces of paper so that when we alternate between them.

Adam (50:26) We can each draw everything.

Georgia (50:27): We can draw everything and then also the other person's not waiting around while the other person draws.

Adam (50:30): Absolutely.

Georgia (50:31): Okay, then you reveal at the end.

Adam (50:33) So we're doing head first.

Georgia (50:34): Yeah. I can't even talk to Adam now, he's focused.

Adam (50:39): I just wonder how much detail are we going into? How long are we drawing this for? I feel like there should be a sort of time limit on this.

Georgia (50:43): That is a good idea because we're both very keen.

Adam (50:45): So for those of you that don't know, Georgia is somewhat brilliant at drawing and is going to totally show me up here. This is largely–

Georgia (50:50): Why did you think I wanted to do this? No, that wasn't my intention. I just thought it would be fun.

Adam (50:57) How are you getting on, Georgia?

Georgia (50:59): I'm okay. How are you getting on? I'm just adding embellishment.

Adam (51:02) Let's stop embellishing. So this is torso down to waist or neck down to waist.

Georgia (51:09): I think hips.

Adam (51:11): Hips. Waist to hips.

Georgia (51:12): Don't forget the arms if that's something that you want. You don't get to do these kinds of things so much as an adult and I think that's very sad.

Adam (51:20) Right, so now this is hips-ish down to feet.

Georgia (51:24): Yeah. Ankles. Or cankles.

Adam (51:28): What are we competing for, Georgia? Are we going for this week's Big–

Georgia (51:31): It doesn't have to be a competition, Adam.

Adam (51:33) Bloody does, you've asked me to do it.

Georgia (51:35): If you'd like to tell Adam that it's not a competition.

Adam (51:38): Join the very very very very long queue of people in my life trying to tell me that.

Georgia (51:43): How are you with board games?

Adam (51:45): I'm fine, 'cause I win.

Georgia (51:46): I'm sorry, I only gave you one leg. You can kind of make two out of it if you want.

Adam (51:50) The next challenge is you've got to knit or crochet one of these for next week.

Georgia (51:57): Fat chance. I've got to finish my several vests and jumpers. Should we switch so that we've got the... Okay. Okay.

Adam (52:05) I was going let people see it.

Georgia (52:06): Where is the camera? There it is. Okay.

Adam (52:08): I want to have a good look at that.

Georgia (52:12): Okay. Aaawh, this is excellent!

Adam (52:15) You've got such a neat drawing style. It's lovely. What a charming... I love him. He's great. Or her.

Georgia (52:23): We love a little tying in!

Adam (52:25) Ah, that worked. Yeah.

Georgia (52:28): Yeah, I was aiming for watermelon, but then they looked like lots of knives.

Adam (52:32) We do a little bit. We've got a sort of alien head with, I don't know, number of different eyes looking in different directions, some strange antenna coming down to what looks like a sort of mug versus teapot type body. It's got a little crack in it, which I love, and sort of saucer around. And then I've added below some very boring straight legs. I was doing some knobbly knees and I thought they could be hairy. And then I realized that they actually, they look like eyes. So I put eyes in the middle of them. And you've drawn some beautiful ballet shoes on the bottom. Very on point.

Georgia (52:48): In giving me those long straight legs, you did really lend the ankles towards a little pointe shoe. Perfect. Then we've got, starting out with a ball of yarn head, got eyeliner and eyelashes. It looks a bit like a mummy though, weirdly. Then we go down to tentacles, octopus, holding a crochet hook with a ball of yarn, which is nice because it ties it in then with the head. Then we go to this watermelon body that actually looks like lots of knife blades sort of.

Adam (53:35) Then maybe there's sort fishy fins next because on the bottom we've got what was a badly drawn mermaid's tail.

Georgia (53:40): I do really like the mermaid's tail. I feel like we had to have a mermaid's tail in us somewhere and I'm glad that you did it for us. I really love this head. I'm now just processing this head bit more. It reminds me of the... ooOOOooooh! The pizza alien things from Toy Story.

Adam (53:56) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So our wall hangings would have been, they would have looked exactly like this, but knitted and crocheted. I wouldn't have made this.

Georgia (54:04): No, no, there was always going to be some kind of weird mis-weighting between having to have a group challenge with three people and four people. I think they did it in a very good way, in the grand scheme of things. But ultimately, if you have to do this with three things rather than four, you're probably more likely to get a bit more cohesion. That is not to diminish the actually really fun, very effective effort of the three person team. The four person effort I don't think would have been saved if they only had to do three panels, I think he would have been in a similar position. But it's all, it's all ifs and buts. And ultimately the person who was struggling the most this week did go home and she was in that team.

Adam (54:46) Yeah, so we should talk about Dipti leaving. I mean, she took, they highlighted Dipti's being at risk and she very clearly was from her performance. She was in tears at the end and she said, I was starting to get out of my depth because it was painful that she was in a position where she obviously started to feel so uncomfortable. That wasn't nice. But it was interesting as well watching her interview with Tom afterwards on the Cast Off off that how much more relaxed and calm and how well she came across, I thought, in that other interview. And I thought that was interesting, again, showing a different side to her. And again, I'm sure that is the power of the edit and what that does for people.

Georgia (55:26): Yeah. And also just the pressure off. I finally submitted a big piece of work for my PhD on Friday and I actually got to have a weekend. I didn't have that hanging over me and I feel like I was a bit of a different person. It was nice. And maybe being in that competition environment again where it was getting stressy, maybe that was just not for her. I did enjoy the fact that in her group, the four person group, she did the removable swimming briefs with the Velcro. And I was like, that's my interactive element.

Adam (55:55) Pulling pants off.

Georgia (55:58): It's like when you try to get your Barbies completely naked and then go, but they always put the little vest on.

Adam (56:03) Can we talk about what's coming up next week?

Georgia (56:05): Yes! Yum yums.

Adam (56:08) Next week they are knitting food that has to be good enough to eat and they're to have a textured cardigan. I am very, very excited to see the cardigans. I'm assuming that's going to be the team challenge. Would love to see a solo challenge, whether you can knit a cardigan in 12 hours. That would be brutal. I guess that's the team challenge is going to be the cardigan and then knitted food is going to be the solo challenge. What's interesting for me about the knitted food is that it's absolutely the wrong craft to do a project like that because we're talking amigurumi, we're talking like small detailed, highly contoured work in three dimensions that screams crochet. When you're knitting very small radiuses, radii, it's very difficult to work on either DPNs or you're working on multiple cable needles and it's just going to be really challenging for them and the shaping is really going to be difficult.

Georgia (57:00): I wonder if they've said knitted food and then we'll get there next week and some people will crochet it.

Adam (57:05) Oh my God, of course. How stupid of me to assume that because they said knitting, that they actually meant knitting. Was what a stupid assumption of mine.

Georgia (57:13): Stupid is a heavy word. Let's not use stupid to describe yourself. It's kids week. Come on.

Adam (57:18) What would I have re-described that. I could have made a better choice for myself. I'm very excited to see what's in Food Week. I must say there is something that I find highly triggering with wool, which is I cannot deal with wool things being put in mouths. I don't know whether one of them is going to demonstrate eating one of these things, but I just can't do that. If they do that, I'm going to have to just run behind the sofa.

Georgia (57:44): It's all chalky, eww.

Adam (57:46) I am slightly apprehensive about the the knitted foods from that point of view.

Georgia (57:50): Do not eat your knitted things.

Adam (57:53) I don't want to see a knitted sausage going anywhere near anyone. Or your crochet thing.

Georgia (57:55): Or you'll crochet things. But of course, knitted was referring to crochet as well. Because I was using the umbrella term.

Adam (58:02) I mean, we may be seeing macramé sausages for a week.

Georgia (58:05): And really, it's all just art.

Adam (58:10) We're gonna get cancelled so fast. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the textured cardigan though. That looks good.

Georgia (58:14): Especially where we saw Holger, that little shock moment of something's gone wrong here. That makes me nervous.

Adam (58:19) Do think they did the cables the wrong way around on one side or something? That would be amazing.

Georgia (58:23): Why aren't we having a cables week? That's the question.

Adam (58:24): I know where's cables week, where's lace week, like all of these other techniques that I want to see more of.

Georgia (58:31): Cable Man wants cable week. Cable Man wants cable week.

Adam (58:35) Shock news for everyone.

Georgia (58:36): Would you prefer Cable Man or Super Cable? Cable Super Man? Man Cable? No.

Georgia (58:55): I think we should end it there.

Adam (58:58) Tune in next week, once I've regained my composure.

Georgia (59:05): Oh my God!