Heavy Metal Knitting World Championship Yields Ridiculous Footage

The 2022 Heavy Steel Knitting World Championship went off in Joensuu, Finland, final week. And photographs from the competitors appears simply as ridiculous because it did in the course of the first one 2019. See the archived stream of the 2022 championship under.

Are you able to think about performing stay solely to cease taking part in your instrument and choose up some needles to start out knitting? As a result of that is what occurs at occasions on this match.

The contest’s Fb web page explains, “In heavy metallic knitting, needlework and music grow to be united like by no means earlier than. On the identical stage … there’s heavy metallic music and knitting shaking fingers. Knitting to the rhythm of heavy metallic music could be in comparison with taking part in air guitar.”

At this yr’s championship, the U.Ok. group String Factor beat out their Finnish and Scottish/Indian rivals to win the 2022 Heavy Steel Knitting World Championship, per Euronews.

Earlier than a German and Swedish group withdrew late within the contest, eight groups in complete — together with Australia, Finland, the U.Ok., Scotland/India and Japan — have been vying for the crown.

However the successful group did a “stunning and energetic present,” the competitors’s judges mentioned. “Creativity was proven in many various varieties — from costumes to the utilizing of house and stage. … The present popped from the stage within the type of enormous yarn balls and the viewers was included to have enjoyable with the artist.”

After the primary Heavy Steel Knitting Championship in 2019, the competitors did not return till a digital match in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic sidelining the in-person festivities the yr prior. However the stay knitting competitors returned to Joensuu this yr.

The championships’ organizer, WTF Productions, calls it “the oddball of all sports activities, crafts and hobbies … coined in the course of the darkest and coldest hours of the Finnish winter in Joensuu.”

The concept for the competitors first got here to them in 2018 after native knitters within the space have been requested if it was attainable to knit with their eyes closed, a lot as a seasoned guitarist would possibly do when performing onstage, a la the veteran Swedish shredder Yngwie Malmsteen.

Study extra at heavymetalknitting.com.