The Great British Sewing Bee

[susandennis]

I have wanted to watch this since I first heard about it some time ago but couldn't noodle out how to do it. I've had it as a TiVo WishList for a long time. Then, tonight, p_j_cleary mentioned watching an episode! So I asked him how/where and he said YouTube.  He was kind enough not to add, dodo!  I had actually Googled it and turned up all kinds of dodgie looking websites but I never once thought to try YouTube.  So I went and found two episodes and watched one and wow.

I learned how to sew when I was very little and made all my own clothes for years and years. I even once (a million years ago) had a small business making clothes for people.  I've never not had a sewing machine in the house but I don't pull it out that often these days.

But what fun to watch a sewing competition!!!  And it's a fun show. None of the nastiness and manufactured drama of shows like Project Runway. I do wish they would all speak in regular accents, though. My ears have a hard time doing simultaneous translations of Brit to Regular (and Kiwi to regular and Aussie to regular, for that matter). On the other hand such a mundane thing like sewing sounds so much cooler when they are chatting about it in their cool accents.  And most of the lingo they use is understandable.

But, it was really great fun to watch and very cool to watch on my Amazon FireTV. Zero lag time or buffering or anything else.

Fun.

And, my back is feeling much better and I haven't injured myself in hours.  Life is good.

Comments

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

It's funny, that accent thing. The rest of the English-speaking world has little difficulty with the American accents because so much media comes from there that we're immersed in it all the time. But I remember once watching a US-made documentary that had Brits, Kiwis and Aussies talking in it and they were subtitled! My jaw dropped.

Personally, I'd prefer that my language and culture weren't being subsumed under the tide of US media - I've had an ongoing battle with my offspring over the pronunciation of the word 'duel'. But I suspect if you wait long enough, everyone will be talking in US English.

TBH, it makes me kind of sad.

I'm really gald you're feeling better! ;-)

[susandennis]

I absolutely understand and, honestly, I am sorry to see the accents and languages go, too. I do have a hard time with British accents - not so much New Zealand or Australia.

Where I run afoul there is word usage. I've never been to Australia or even known a lot of them but my Kiwi friends love to trip me up (or so I accuse them) with word usage.

The first time I went there was for 10 days and I kept a little notebook of stuff we did not understand. I nearly filled it up. On the last night we had dinner with some family friends in Wellington and I opened up my notebook and we play "So, when you say xxx, what the heck to you mean??!!" It was a fun game. I have friends coming from Cromwell to visit in July and they will have a whole bag of words and phrases I don't know just so they can laugh (good naturedly) at me.

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

;-) That is kind of neat, and even though we get a lot of generic US media here, I bet there's a load of that stuff that happens the other way as well.

I'm really looking forward to when I can speak Finnish well enough to start detecting their idioms!

[susandennis]

The two I remember off the top of my head were my friend, grilling burgers on my terrace yelling in for a fishslice. We almost burned the burgers while we sorted that one out.

And the first day ever in New Zealand. We were in a garage in Christchurch that had HUGE yellow and black signs (I mean REALLY big) that said BEWARE!!!! JUDDER BARS!!

We had no clue what a judder bar was. The four of us had visions of man-(hopefully, no woman-) eating monsters that lived underground in Kiwi garages.

To this day, I can't go over a speed bump without cracking a smile.

I'll betcha the Finish have a ton of stuff that when directly translated makes no sense at all! What fun it will to discover it all.

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

I am still not sure what a smore is. Is it like a grue?

[susandennis]

I have no clue what a grue is!

A smore is a cookie sandwich. It's made with a graham cracker (you have graham crackers?) layer, then a layer of chocolate and a marshmallow, topped with another graham cracker.

The marshmallow should be roasted over a fire before adding to the smore. It's a favorite camping food. It's name comes from how good it is. Everyone always says I want s(ome) more!

It looks like this:

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

I have heard of these graham cracker things. Based on the picture, I think it's what we would call a digestive biscuit.

In NZ, anything called a cracker is usually savoury and designed to go with cheese and pickles and stuff. But that wouldn't work well with marshmallow, methinks. Those do look very more-ish.

Meanwhile, grues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_%28monster%29). ;-)

[susandennis]

Graham crackers are indeed more like digestive biscuits than most anything else i can think of. And, generally, except for graham crackers, our crackers are savory, too for cheeses.

But, of course, our biscuits are nothing like yours :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit

Sounds like we haven't entirely inculcated ourselves into your culture quite yet :)

[fifona.livejournal.com]

I love that programme. I even considered, for a nano-second, applying for the next series (they didn't have a Scottish girl this series, but that would probably be the only thing in my favour!) The auditions etc for the BBC are initially done by geographical region, obviously, so they should always end up with a good spread of accents. In the most recent series Lynda, the Welsh lady, is profoundly deaf, so she had to stop sewing every time they spoke to her so she could lip-read or turn to her signing interpreter. Can you imagine?! Even though she's deaf her Welsh accent was strong!!

[susandennis]

OMG!! I thought that the reason I really couldn't understand what Lynda was saying was because of her hearing issues. Turns out it was her Welsh accent! Ha.

I did not see the first episode (only the second episode so far) but I love that they never showed the interpreter or even made note of her hearing issues OR even mentioned why Tom? is using a crutch. Here in the states, they would have delved into both in the most exploitive way and mentioned them again over and over and over again.

I think you should give consideration another nanosecond of thought. Imagine being surrounded by all those wonderful fabrics and all the tools you could ask for!!

[fifona.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, I checked and the closing date is gone - whoosh! I think they did mention David (I checked his name) had had an operation and was off work for three months. They certainly do not dwell on "issues". I had not thought about how PR etc really do harp on and on about differences, but you're so right.

I loved the young guy from Yorkshire, all that tweed...

It's certainly nice and friendly, and I would say the contestants this series are a wee bit more adversarial than the first series, if you can believe that!

[susandennis]

Wee bit more adversarial??? These folks make the PR contestants look like serial killers!!!

I see there is another episode on YouTube. Happy Monday afternoon for me!!

[fifona.livejournal.com]

Serial killers! Love it!

[fj.livejournal.com]

The "hands" in the How To Make Your Own segments are my friend Melissa. I meet her with her husband on their houseboat and we geek over patterns.

[susandennis]

kewel!!! It's a Kevin Bacon of sewing bee.