Knit Madness Day 14: And The Winner Is...

Now, without further adieu.

Recap: Day 13, Championship

The Wheel of Time and Murder, She Wrote fandoms mobilized to vote in a Bluesky poll. How did it turn out? Well…

Both sides swapped for the lead multiple times, and The Wheel of Time held it for a good chunk of the matchup. At 11:14 a.m. ET, the timestamp of when I screenshotted the poll results and sent them to a friend, Rand was winning by five votes.

But, a late surge in the final three hours of the 24-hour voting period for Murder, She Wrote ultimately pushed the long-running cozy mystery series to victory.

• Matchup: (9) The Wheel of Time (45%) vs (2) Murder, She Wrote (55%)

Congratulations to Jessica Fletcher and her iconic Angler’s Pride cardigan, the first-ever winner of Knit Madness!

And here’s the final bracket!

You can find a detailed rundown of Knit Madness here.

The Earnings

As I mentioned in the original post launching this tournament, I plan to do some kind of deep dive into the sweaters of Murder, She Wrote. I’m not sure what that’ll look like because I plan to take a break for a couple of weeks, but I hope to have that out sometime in April or early May at the latest. (I promise I do not normally post/send out newsletters this often.)

I’ll draft a set of official rules at some point, but one thing is for certain: As the winner of Knit Madness 2025, Jessica Fletcher and her fish cardigan cannot compete again; she also can’t enter with another sweater from her extensive collection, either. But she’s also the first winner of this whole tournament; nobody can take that away.

And now that this tournament is over, I think I can announce: We’re gonna do it again next year! If I have a full-time job by then, it might look a little different/be more spread out instead of this very chaotic two-week spread, but I’ll know more about what that looks like later in the year or early next year.

A Look Back at Knit Madness 2025

I launched a 64-sweater bracket two weeks ago with a simple question: Who had the best sweater? In those two weeks, there have been upsets, shockers, voting surges, and a write-up that led to this tournament reaching more eyeballs than I ever thought it would.

Do I think this tournament would’ve played out differently had more eyes been on it earlier? Maybe! At least, I suspect that some sweaters wouldn’t have fallen in the first round and some that got super far this time around might’ve been voted out earlier.

For the new subscribers, some context: I’m an entertainment journalist and a knitter, and I’ve been writing about cinematic knitwear since 2019 (thanks, Knives Out!). I launched this newsletter in 2022 as a side project and a place to let people opt into my knitting updates.

But I got laid off 18 months ago. It’s been nearly impossible to find a new one since—I’ve had a few interviews, including around the start of this tournament (didn’t get that gig), but no dice—and freelancing has been a bit of a crapshoot. So, on top of having entirely too much time on my hands, it’s also a showcase of my creativity and an open call: Editors, if you liked what you saw throughout all of this and want to work with me in the future, let’s chat.

What’s next?

For one thing, I am going to take that aforementioned break. I want to run a Q&A I’ve been holding for months, which I mentioned in my January post.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to send a survey out to subscribers to gauge what you might want to see in future newsletters and how I can streamline this for next year (I know the polling method was wonky; I’m open to changing it). I’m happy you joined me during Knit Madness, but I hope you stick around for the rest of the year.

If you want to nominate a knitted or crocheted item, you can do so by filling out this form. (Here’s what I’m looking for, as well as an archive of previous picks.) If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to directly support my work, you can leave me a tip on Ko-Fi or Venmo.