September 24th, 2004

The unrecognized assistants on those do-it-yourself shows

Some people from my knitting group have been among those assisting in the preparation of today’s episode of the knitting show Knitty Gritty on The Do It Yourself Network.

Stop reading if you don’t want the television illusion shattered, or at least cracked a bit.

Each volunteer was assigned a section of a sweater to knit. The show’s host will take those pieces and do some short demonstration with it, perhaps sewing pieces together or illustrating one of the trickier parts.

After each volunteer made their assigned part, they also had to start working on the same sweater again, but not to finish it. They will be in the background knitting while the host does the feature demonstration.

What’s more, each volunteer has already been told what problem they will be having with the sweater, so that the host can help extricate them from whatever mess they got themselves into. Nevermind that they already made the sweater that the host was using in the demonstration just a few minutes ago. Clearly, they know what they’re doing; they did all the knitting!

If you thought the hosts of these shows actually did the cooking/sewing/knitting/whatever, well now you know better.

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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