The Norwegian team of knitters not only failed to beat the world's "sheep to sweater" knitting record they were aiming at, they took nearly twice as long. 

 

At 8.35am on Saturday morning, after eight hours and 33 minutes of non-stop knitting, the nine-strong knitting team presented their finished sweater. The Australian team they were trying to beat managed the same feat in just four hours and 51 minutes. 

 

"I think it took them over eight hours because it was their first time, and because the sheep's wool is very heavy and fatty at this time of year," Lise-May Spissoy, the programme's producer, told The Local. "Maybe they will try again." 

 

The National Knitting Evening, which was covered by media across the world, began on Friday evening with four hours of knitting-themed programming, before a Norwegian white sheep called Guri was brought before the cameras. 

 

Once the clock started ticking, she was sheared, her wool was spun, and it was then knitted into a traditional Norwegian jumper. 

 

The show was the latest in a string of 'slow TV' programmes NRK has released since 2009, when the channel stuck a camera on the top of a train and live broadcast a seven-hour trip from Bergen to Oslo.

 

They've since broadcast live real-time footage of the passage of one of the country's famous coastal ferries, and also, last year, filmed a log fire being painstakingly built and then burnt. 

 

Rune Møklebust, head of programming at NRK, said before the knitting programme was aired, that it was "kind of ordinary TV but very slow — although they’ll be knitting as fast as they can".

 

Spissoy said that NRK would not receive audience figures until Monday.