The Princess of Wales has an impressive skillset but even she can't be good at everything and there's one hobby she's "terrible" at that her father-in-law also found difficult to master. King Charles ended up chatting about it to Olympic Gold Medal winning diver Tom Daley at a garden party on Day 1 of his State Visit to the US.
Tom is famously a knitting enthusiast and the King confessed that he tried it once "when he was eight". According to the diver, Charles told him he "wasn't very good" but apparently said "he might pick it back up" and knows it's "very good for mental health".
Kate has been equally open about her struggles with the hobby. Back in 2022 the Princess attended a rugby match in her role as Patron of the Rugby Football League and reportedly told volunteer Susan Hill, "I tried knitting once and I was terrible at it, so I'll have to come for lessons".
A few years earlier the future Queen also told a group of women during a visit to Glasgow that she'd tried to knit something special for Prince George when he was a baby. Perhaps this was her ne main attempt, as it didn't seem to have gone well…
"I've been trying to knit and I'm really bad. I should be asking for tips. I tried knitting when I first had George," she's said to have declared. "I tried to knit him a very special jumper, but I got halfway down and it splattered. It's such an amazing skill."
Like King Charles, she seems to wish she had mastered knitting and given what His Majesty said to Tom Daley at the White House garden party, perhaps he will end up giving it another go after all.
The Olympian and the monarch have crossed paths before and it was Charles who bestowed Tom's OBE for his services to diving LGBT+ rights and charity work. The pair also ended up "talking all things knitting" this time - as revealed by Tom in an Instagram post afterwards.
Whilst the King wasn't "very good" at this specific hobby, he's known for his love of painting which he inherited from his father Prince Philip. In 2022 he described it as "one of the most relaxing and therapeutic exercises [he] know[s]" at an exhibition of a selection of his artwork.
In a panel display for this he explained that he took up painting "entirely because I found photography less than satisfying".
King Charles added, "Quite simply, I experienced an overwhelming urge to express what I saw through the medium of watercolor and to convey that almost 'inner' sense of texture which is impossible to achieve via photography."
His daughter-in-law is also artistic and we’ve seen glimpses of her work over the years, including the sketch of St Andrews she did in 2002 when she was at university. The Prince and Princess of Wales shared this on Instagram after they visited Scotland in 2021 and she’s also posted a drawing she did of Prince Louis as part of the Shaping Us framework.
