Olympic Gold Medalist Lizzy Yarnold Celebrated With Night Of 'Knitflixing'

Is knitting and Netflix the ultimate way to relax?
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Olympic Skeleton athlete Lizzy Yarnold would be forgiven for hitting the town hard after bagging gold at the Pyeongchang Games on Saturday, but she had other ideas.

The 29-year-old spent the evening watching Australian crime drama ‘Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries’ on Netflix, while practising her knitting.

Once the activity of choice for our grandmas, knitting has seen a popularity boom across all ages in recent years, with a 2017 report from Mintel indicating a 12% rise in women doing some sort of needlecraft as a hobby in the past two years. The hobby has been linked to stress relief and boosting wellbeing, as well as improving the nation’s knitwear game. Now, there’s even a blog dedicated to knitflixing - aka watching Netflix while knitting - while more than 3,600 photos have been tagged #KnitFlix on Instagram.

Inspired by Lizzy’s unabashed love of the hobby, we asked knitting fans on Twitter whether ‘knitflixing’ is the ultimate way to have a night in. You answered with a resounding “yes”.

Yarn by name, yarn by nature.
Richard Heathcote via Getty Images
Yarn by name, yarn by nature.

Knitting enthusiast and journalist Alicia Melville-Smith said she recently created a new jumper while watching several different seasons of a Netflix show. “Netflix binges are the main time I get most of my knitting done. Only rule is that it can’t be a subtitled programme because my brain can’t manage both,” she said.

Alicia Melville-Smith's jumper.
Alicia Melville-Smith
Alicia Melville-Smith's jumper.

Meanwhile graphic designer Jill Chapman said she finds it hard to sit still without her hands being busy, so always has a project in front of her if she’s having a night in with a programme. “I have a separate pile for with or without wine because wine and the wrong project can have dire consequences!” she joked.

Political commentator Jane Merrick told us she knits different items depending on the nature of the show she’s watching. “If I’m watching something engrossing, eg on Netflix, I knit a very easy thing like a scarf, but for BBC Newsnight which only really requires listening, I do fair isle [a technique pictured below], for which I need to follow a pattern closely,” she said.

Jane Merrick's latest creation, including a fair isle swirl.
Jane Merrick
Jane Merrick's latest creation, including a fair isle swirl.

Merrick is such a fan of knitting while watching TV, she’s even launched her own blog Newsknit, dedicated to celebrating the past time. “It is the best way to relax at the end of the day - there is a rhythm to it which requires just enough concentration to distract from any worries but not enough to make it too tiring,” she said.

Here’s what some of our other readers had to say about knitflixing. One thing’s for sure, it’s not just Lizzy Yarnold doing it.

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