Adrienne Martini - Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously

Praise for Sweater Quest

I could NOT put Sweater Quest down! I felt as though I was knitting the sweater along with Adrienne, felt her pain and her joy. Once I even thought, as I was packing the car, Now WHERE is that Alice Starmore sweater I was working on? The book became that insinuated into my psyche. I love this book.

Annie Modesitt, author of
Confessions of a Knitting Heretic

This is a delicious, delicious book. Sweater Quest is an epic, funny traveloguea sort of Borat, except with yarn. (And no Kazakh accent.) This is the story of a sweater, but at its heart this is the story of a knitter who may have bitten off more than she can chewand therein lies the tale. Adriennes travels down the rabbit hole of the knitting world make this story absolutely perfect for everyone who understands that there is no such thing as too much knitting. Every knitter will identify with Adrienne Martinis all-in obsession. Put down your needles for a few minutes and come along for a wild, wild ride.

Ann Shayne, coauthor with Kay Gardiner of
Mason-Dixon Knitting

What a delightful book! Adrienne Martinis witty, breezy account of her beyond-admirable knitting project is sure to please.

Maggie Sefton, New York Times bestselling author of the
Kelly Flynn Knitting Mysteries

I love this odyssey, and Adriennes writing. I am so glad she is willing to share it with any reader (knitter or not) who is attracted to an improbable, obsessive journey.

Linda Roghaar, coeditor with Molly Wolf of
KnitLit, KnitLit (too), and KnitLit the Third

Also by Adrienne Martini

Hillbilly Gothic

Adrienne Martini

Free Press
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Free Press
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Copyright 2010 by Adrienne Martini

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address
Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas,
New York, NY 10020.

First Free Press trade paperback edition March 2010

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Designed by Carla Jayne Jones

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martini, Adrienne.

Sweater quest : my year of knitting dangerously / Adrienne Martini.

p. cm.

1. Knitting. 2. SweatersScotlandFair Isle. 3. Knitters (Persons)

4. Martini, Adrienne, 1971I. Title.

TT825.M27595 2010

746.4320922dc22

2009031901

ISBN 978-1-4165-9764-3

ISBN 978-1-4165-9766-7 (ebook)

For Cory, because his sister got the first one

I knit so I dont kill people.

bumper sticker spotted at Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival

Had I not discovered knitting, I would not be the paragon of sanity that I am today.

No, really.

When I had my first baby in 2002, I lost my mind. And by lost my mind, I dont intend to imply minor weepiness or fleeting unhappiness. Two weeks into my maternity leave, I checked myself into my local psych ward because Id become a danger to myself. At the time, it seemed that reclaiming even a shred of my former aplomb would be impossible. Now the whole event feels like it happened to someone else.

Time is a great balm, of course. So are high-grade pharmaceuticals. But what really helped turn the tide was knitting. Now most of the drugs are a distant memory. The yarn, however, is still with me. So are baskets of knitted hats, scarves, sweaters, and socks.

With some input from my husband, I also made a second kid. That, however, is a story that differs little from what we were all taught in health class. My body used the pattern it is encoded with and knitted up a boy baby this time.

After my sons birth, nothing unexpected happened. My husband and I lost sleep. We wondered when wed ever stop doing six loads of laundry every day. My older child did her best to adjust to the new blob who, she believed, supplanted her in her parents affections. We did our best to assure her that she was loved.

Occasionally I did burst into tears, but I was able to stop again relatively quickly, which was a big change from the first time around. I also spent some of the mothering downtime, those moments when the wee one only wants to sleep in your lap, knitting a sweater for my very tall husband. It wasnt anything fancy, just miles and miles of garter stitch, which is an amazing tonic to frayed and exhausted nerves.

Had you asked me a decade ago what Id see myself doing in the future, obsessively knitting would not have been in the Top Ten possible answers. Like so many women who were girls in the seventies, at some point I was taught to knit, which I promptly forgot in favor of swooning over Leif Garrett and perfecting my eye roll. I learned again shortly before getting pregnant the first time, when the most recent round of knitting mania swept through the United States. After all, if Julia Roberts can knit, so can I. That and a fondness for Lyle Lovett can be what we have in common.

I knitted a lot of hats during my first babys first year, simply because hats are criminally easy to knit. Once you get the basics down, even if you are sleep deprived and leaking bodily fluids, a hat requires minimal mental gymnastics.

I could finish a hat in about a week, working on it when the baby was on my lap, which seemed like every waking moment of every endless day. Each finished hat made me feel that I had at least accomplished something short-term and tangible. From sticks and some string, Id crafted a useful item. Given that the other project, who was cooing in my lap, was definitely a long-term action item, these little hats made me feel as if I could still finish what Id started as long as I kept my projects small.

Like a baby, knitting is a gift that keeps surprising you. Baby surprises tend to be immediate and bipolareither thats cool! or thats disgusting!but knitting surprises are subtle and enduring. Making stuff with my very own hands has enriched my life in innumerable ways. Both kids and craft have taught me how to deal with frustration so acute that Id want to bite the head off a kitten. Both are great courses in expectation management. Both have given more than theyve takenand introduced me to a community that I otherwise never would have known.

Moms are different from nonmoms, which isnt to say that we cant understand women without children; its just that women with kids (no matter how they wound up with them) can identify with other moms in a stronger way. Thats not to say that we all endorse each others choices (and if you ever want to start a hair-pulling fight, state an opinion on breastfeeding to a room full of moms) but that we bond with each other in an innate way.

Knitters immediately bond with other knitters too. Amy R. Singer states it best in her 2002 manifesto for Knitty.com: We are different, arent we? Knitters. We take strands of fiber and from them we create wonders. We share what we know. Were anxious to do it. We want there to be more of us. People who look at the world a little differently. A little less gimme and a little more let me try that. We enjoy process as much as product. We knit.