Heavy metal and knitting: not such a motley crew

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/04/2019 (2667 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If I asked you to name two things that naturally go together, you would probably come up with something like peanut butter and jelly.

Or salt and pepper. Possibly spaghetti and meatballs. Maybe bacon and eggs. Gin and tonic would be another great combo. Even fish and chips. I’d also accept Donald Trump and deeply offensive tweets.

What I would not expect you to say is heavy-metal music and (dramatic pause) knitting — at least not unless you are clinically insane. Or possibly Finnish.

I make this bold statement because Finland has just announced that this summer, it will play host to the inaugural World Heavy Metal Knitting Championships, wherein the clacking of knitting needles will be combined with the ear-bleeding din of metal music.

“In Heavy Metal Knitting World Championships, the knitters basically knit to the beat of heavy-metal music,” organizers of the contest, which will take place in Joensuu, Finland, on July 11, explained on their website. “It’s a bit like air-guitar playing, but using knitting needles and heavy-metal attitude as your tools!

“In heavy-metal knitting, the knitter becomes a part of the band, showing their best needlework tricks as the heavy riffs echo in the background. The knitter takes part in the jam while their balls of yarn and knitting needles swish through the air…

“In heavy-metal knitting, needlework and music become united like never before. On the same stage, accompanied by a million-dollar guitar solo, with hair flowing in the air, there’s heavy-metal music and knitting, shaking hands.”

OK, everybody got that? No? I’m not surprised. As far as I can understand from reading the contest website and a smattering of news reports, organizers decided to launch the world championships because Finnish people are obsessed with (a) knitting; and (b) heavy-metal music.

“Finland is the promised land of heavy-metal music,” the organizers howled in a statement. “There are 50 heavy-metal bands per 100,000 Finnish citizens, which is astonishingly many and actually more than anywhere else in the whole world.

“The number of needlework enthusiasts is equally high, as according to even the most modest estimates, there are hundreds of thousands of people in Finland who are immersed in various kinds of needlework crafts, knitting included.”

To enter the world championships, head-banging knitters must first download the song Fight Or Die by Joensuu thrash-metal band Maniac Abductor, then upload a one-minute video clip of themselves knitting along to the music to YouTube.

What is the grand prize, you ask? According to the organizers, the world’s finest heavy-metal knitter will win “a hotel weekend in authentic Finnish scenery.”

Ha ha ha. Oh, OK, apparently they aren’t kidding. Honestly, my first reaction on hearing about the World Heavy Metal Knitting Championships was something along the lines of, “Huh?”

But after giving it several minutes of deep thought, I suddenly realized that I was deeply jealous. Why, I asked myself, can’t we combine two distinctly Canadian things and then hold a world championship to find out which idiot could do those two things at the same time better than any other idiot, if you catch my drift?

For example, we could hold the World Street Hockey Maple Syrup Pouring Championships, or possibly the World Wearing A Parka With Your Halloween Costume And Eating Nanaimo Bars Championship.

There are more stupid suggestions where those came from, but that’s not the point. The point is the Finns have beaten us to the punch, or the stitch, or whatever you say in competitive knitting.

If you watched last year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, you will know the Finns are the presumed favourite to win the heavy-metal knitting contest. Their passion for knitting made the Finnish athletes the darlings of the Games.

At least half of Finland’s 102-strong Olympic team were spotted pulling out their needles during the Games as a form of stress relief. “It has become something of a hobby for me,” Finland’s snowboarding coach, Antti Koskinen, explained at a news conference where the Finnish athletes put their knitting chops on display. “I mean I do it every four years… it is a nice, Finnish thing… it means no unnecessary chit-chat is needed.”

I asked my wife about the Finnish contest and she thought it was a brilliant idea, because she is of Norwegian heritage. The Norwegians are such giant knitting fans that, a few years back, their state-run TV channel dedicated five hours of live airtime to something called National Knitting Night, a show wherein a team of eight needle-wielding Norwegian knitters attempted to break the world record for completing a sweater, starting with shearing the wool off the back of a live sheep.

Despite her passion for wool, my spouse isn’t going to sign up for the championships. “I think my own knitting would be full of lots of mistakes knitting to heavy metal — it would just make my head pound and grate on my nerves. However, if there was a folk-music-knitting event, I would be all over that!” is what she told me.

Still, I’d hate to see this country have the wool pulled over its eyes. Some metal-loving Canadian knitter needs to sign up. But they will have to be extremely careful during the head-banging segment, because those needles could put someone’s eye out.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca