Knit Madness Day 7: Color Work/Christmas

I want to talk about voting for a minute.

In years past, if I wanted to launch something like this, I would’ve almost definitely used Twitter polls to tally voting. It was simple: I could write the poll, set a limit on how long it ran, and you could embed tweets into the newsletter. Things have changed drastically over there—Twitter’s now a hotbed for white supremacy and bigotry, links regularly get throttled, and there are too many bots to count who’d try to post links to T-shirts or something—so I knew that wasn’t an option. Using third-party sites offered their own pros and cons, and part of that was that the features on the free tier (the only one feasible to me) would be severely limited.

So, I found a compromise of a solution: poll.blue. It’s a polling app for Bluesky (an open-source social media platform that I spend a lot of my time on), and by providing an app-generated login, I can post polls. The polls go up, and the account bot shares every poll. After 24 hours, the bot will post the results¹ .

It’s a very imperfect way of doing it. You can, at most, have six windows for this site open at a time; it was an issue for me during the First Round. It’s glitchy and doesn’t always seem to register your vote. I hope that by the time this contest rolls around next year, either Bluesky has implemented polls, but if they don’t, I might have to figure out an alternative. (Fwiw, I also thought the audience would be a lot smaller than what it’s already grown to, so what worked for the initial crowd might not work as much now.)

But for the time being, here’s how to vote:

1. If you’re viewing this in your inbox or on the website, find the poll you want to vote for by scrolling through this post until you get to the corresponding Bluesky embed.

2. Click on the post, and it will take you to Bluesky either via the web or the app; you don’t need an account to interact with it.

3. If you’re interacting with the polls directly on Bluesky because you found my thread of each day’s matchups, start here.

4. You’ll see two hyperlinked options and a third option, “Show Results.” Click on one of the two options if you wish to vote.

5. When prompted with a popup reading, “Leaving Bluesky,” click “Visit Site.”

6. If it worked, there should be a checkmark next to the option you voted for.

7. If it didn’t work and it’s only showing the polls without a checkmark, try again. I’m not familiar enough with the polling app to know how to troubleshoot it, but it can’t hurt, right?

8. Replying to the poll with the corresponding number emoji and your pick doesn't count as a vote, although I certainly appreciate the enthusiasm.

Good luck, and hopefully, that will smooth any wrinkles you might have.

Recap: Day 6, Textured/Miscellaneous

Another No. 1 seed—The Nanny—falls by only a single vote. And only one of these four matchups could actually be considered a blowout.

• Matchup: (1) The Nanny (49.3%) vs (9) The Wheel of Time (50.7%)

• Matchup: (2) Coraline (51.6%) vs (7) My So-Called Life (48.4%)

• Matchup: (3) Only Murders in the Building (75.9%) vs (11) Penny Dreadful (24.1%)

• Matchup: (12) While You Were Sleeping (52.4%) vs (13) A Fish Called Wanda (47.6%)

You can find a detailed rundown of Knit Madness here.

Today’s Matchups

Matchup: (2) Murder, She Wrote season 1 vs (7) Bridget Jones’s Diary

(2) Murder, She Wrote (1×02, “Deadly Lady”)

The Sweater: A cream-colored zippered cardigan with several fish stitched together in black yarn on the front and sleeves. (Not seen: Even more fish on the back.)

Who Wore It: Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), who’s perhaps the greatest detective that Cabot Cove has ever seen. Or she should be.

Replica: Yes

Notes: A different version of Jessica’s sweater would later show up in Gossip Girl season courtesy of Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), a fact brought to me by a Murder, She Wrote fan. And I cannot stress how difficult it was to pick only one of Jessica’s sweaters for this prompt; I’ve never seen the show, but solely based on photos, I’m a big fan of her “Home Sweet Home” pullover.

Previously Defeated: (15) Finding Mr. Christmas.

(7) Bridget Jones’s Diary

The Sweater: A dark green turtleneck sweater with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the center.

Who Wore It: A very grumpy modern-day Darcy—Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).

Replica: No

Notes: Kinda love how only Colin Firth could get specifically type-cast to play Darcy.

Previously Defeated: Fellow grump (10) How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Who has the better sweater?

Matchup: (4) The O.C. season 1 vs (12) A Close Shave

(4) The O.C. (1×13, "The Best Chrismukkah Ever")

The Sweater: A white, blue, and red pullover. It’s mainly white with red trimming with blue reindeer and blue around the neck.

Who Wore It: Inclusive winter holiday king Seth Cohen (Adam Brody).

Replica: No

Notes: It’s not often you portmanteau a word on a TV show, and it becomes a whole thing.

Previously Defeated: (13) Schitt’s Creek.

(12) A Close Shave

The Sweater: A white turtleneck sweater with pink stripes made from his own wool.

Who Wore It: Shaun the Sheep, a Wallace and Gromit character cool enough to get his own films.

Replica: No

Notes: Unlike everyone else in this tournament, Shaun knows exactly where that wool came from.

Previously Defeated: (5) The Shining.

Who has the better sweater?

Matchup: (8) The Killing season 1 vs (16) Anna and the Apocalypse

(8) The Killing (1×08, “Episode 8,” and every other one of season 1’s 20 episodes)

The Sweater: A white and white Faroe Island vón star sweater.

Who Wore It: Inspector Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl), who’s about to immigrate to Sweden before a season-long murder mystery keeps her right in Denmark.

Replica: Yes

Notes: People went wild over this sweater almost as much as they did over the show.

Previously Defeated: (9) A Nightmare on Elm Street.

(16) Anna and the Apocalypse

The Sweater: A navy pullover with white polka dots and a green Christmas tree featuring red and blue ornaments that light up.

Who Wore It: John (Malcolm Cumming), one of several Scottish Sixth Formers (I think) who gets caught up in a zombie apocalypse around the Christmas holidays.

Replica: No

Notes: I love whoever thought to combine zombies, musicals, and Christmas into a movie. I haven’t seen it yet, but apparently, it’s good.

Previously Defeated: (1) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which I definitely did not see coming.

Who has the better sweater?

Matchup: (11) Arthur Christmas vs (14) What We Do in the Shadows

(11) Arthur Christmas

The Sweater: A bright green pullover with “HO HO HO” stitched across the shoulder and different colored ornaments dangling down.

Who Wore It: Arthur Claus (James McAvoy), the clumsy and eccentric younger son of the current Santa who ends up having to save Christmas.

Replica: No

Notes: I have somehow never heard of this film before this tournament, but it’s a really fun sweater.

Previously Defeated: (6) Saturday Night Live’s infamous Schweddy Balls sketch.

(14) What We Do in the Shadows (1×02, “City Council,” and 1×07, “The Trial”)

The Sweater: A multicolored geometric fair isle sweater that features several rows of birds.

Who Wore It: Vastly overworked and underappreciated familiar (and Van Helsing descendant) Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén).

Replica: No, but multiple versions of this Ralph Lauren number are on eBay! (Thanks, Leah!)

Notes: Guillermo is another TV character with a ton of sweaters, but at least he might have a place to put them.

Previously Defeated: (3) Gravity Falls’ sweater queen Mabel Pines (Kristen Schaal).

Who has the better sweater?

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1  Whenever I list percentages for matchup results, this is the marker I use, no matter what the tally might say later since I don’t think the polls ever “close.”