Now, without further adieu.

I like watching the polls change in real time.

It probably wasn’t the healthiest way of observing this tournament, but there’s something exciting about seeing the pie charts form and move from one color dominating the other. How close some matchups were while others weren’t. How I still need to form a tie contingency plan.

Last year’s Knit Madness final was a nail-biter until the very end when Murder, She Wrote won over The Wheel of Time. But this year? How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, an unlikely contender from the start—one that literally wasn’t on my radar until mid-February—, took an early lead against the beloved, long-running crime series Shetland and didn’t let go. And, now that all the polls are closed, it sits atop 63 fabulous pullovers, raglans, vests, v-necks, turtlenecks, mohairs, and cardigans.

Congrats to Saoirse Shaw and her very green and very Irish cable-knit sweater!

And here’s the final bracket!

You can find a detailed rundown of Knit Madness here.

Since How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is both a serialized series and only has eight episodes out to date, determining what to watch is easy: For this sweater deep dive, I’m watching the whole series! And it will now always sit next to Murder, She Wrote in the winners’ circle.

To be honest, I know so little about How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (I’ve only read the premise) that I don’t even know if it features sweaters other than the one that Saoirse wears in two of the show’s eight episodes. But it’ll be nice to discover that for myself!

I can’t exactly say when that will arrive in your inboxes, but it certainly won’t be right away; I owe you a different deep dive first (more on that below). But also, please politely yell at me if it gets to be November or December and I still haven’t paid up.

Doing this once was madness. Doing it again even more so. And now this tournament’s come to an end—with a result I don’t think anyone saw coming: A no. 13 seed (and a show that’s barely six weeks old) took the whole thing, which no basketball team has accomplished; the lowest one to ever win it all was no. 8 seed Villanova in 1985.

Another sweater in the bracket—Ryland Grace’s fox/wolf cardigan from Project Hail Mary¹—blew up so much that the knitwear brand Mary Maxim sold out of its initial run of knit kits. Whether you bought everything from Mary Maxim, only got the pattern and are using your own yarn, or are tweaking even that because you think Mary Maxim didn’t get the fox quite right, I can’t wait to see what everyone makes. I can only imagine how many fox cardigans I’ll see around New York this Halloween.

Also: If you’re anywhere near AMC Lincoln Square in New York City (and have a movie ticket to get in), you can see it for yourself!

And sharing it one last time because I’m very proud of it, I wrote about the Heated Rivalry fleece for Roger Ebert!

It’s a lot of work to put this together, and between this and job hunting, I’ve knitted most of a baby blanket for an IRL friend (hence no photos of it on Instagram yet) that I hope to finish and block this week.

So to answer what’s next, it’s a nap, mostly! I kid, but I am very aware of the fact that I still have not delivered on deep-diving into Murder, She Wrote’s knitwear after it won the inaugural tournament. I’ve made a bit of progress on that front thanks to some lovely Murder, She Wrote fans, but I’ll probably wait until after Easter to get started, so if you have sweater thoughts about Jessica Fletcher or any other character, you still have time to weigh in.

I hope you enjoyed looking at and fighting great sweaters over the past month. Let’s do it again next year!

If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to directly support my work, you can leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

And if you think I missed some major sweaters in this year’s Knit Madness tournament (or want to give some non-sweaters some love), you have the chance to nominate your favorite piece of cinematic knitwear and tell me all about it: Just fill out this Google Form to tell me all about it! If you need some suggestions or want to look at what I’ve covered in the past, I’ve got more information here.