Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously

I wouldn't recommend this to non-knitters because, really, I don't think they would understand what she was talking about. I loved the interviews with the grand-poobah knitters, I loved her voice and style, but I mostly loved validating my belief that Alice Starmore is one crazy bitch.

I tend to enjoy "stunt memoirs" where an author chooses to indulge in a passion (or something just eccentric) for a year and chronicles the journey for those of us not inclined to devote a year of our lives to whatever task they have chosen. So I thought I would simply adore Adrienne Marini's Sweater Quest about her desire to knit the Fair Isle Mary Tudor sweater designed by Alice Starmore, a famously talented designer and something of an enfant terrible in the knitting world. I really, really wanted to love the book. I mean, I learned to knit many years ago when my grandmother sat patiently with me, picking up my myriad dropped stitches and generally trying to help me create a reasonable fascimile of a scarf. (Note that the scarf was show more never finished and I do not remember much at all about knitting, to the point that when two of my children took a knitting class this summer, I was at a loss to help them and their own unfinished scarf renditions can be stashed next to mine in the basement forever.) But much as I wanted to love this book, I didn't. And I found myself just a little bored by it.

Very little of the book is actually about knitting the pattern that makes experienced knitters sit up and say "Wow." Instead, the book wanders from the mechanics of knitting (and really, even a non-knitter like me doesn't need a description of the knit and purl stitches) to the controversy of Alice Starmore to yarn to why knitting as an art was dying to the thoughts of other famous knitters. While all of these are or could be interesting, they don't hold together here. Bouncing from topic to topic, this lacks the cohesiveness and sense of the project that should pervade a book of this type. Like many of the stunt memoirs, this started as a blog project and that shows in the writing here. It is casual, full of slang, and a little overly precious at times. I would have like more on her struggles with the actual project and less about whether or not her changing the yarns made her sweater not what she set out to knit. Perhaps this question is of great importance to serious knitters but to casual hobbyists or non-knitters, the repetition is too much. And in surfing around I see that serious knitters seem to like this a lot more than I did. It's too bad it didn't live up to its potential for me but the knitting community is large so fitting into that niche market rather than a generalist market wouldn't be terrible. Meanwhile, I might dig out that old mangled scarf and ask my grandmother to show me how to knit one more time. show less

I love reading books about hobbies and obsessions and this fit the bill. I learned a lot about knitting and the power-players of the knitting sub-culture. I missed out because I didn't understand some if the lingo & the references to designers and patterns but Google solved most of those issues. I felt at times like she was trying too hard to be funny - probably in an effort to lighten up some of the seriously dry sections about legal controversy in the knitting world. (really! There is legal drama!) anyway, I liked it, but this type of book is not for everyone. My guess is that unless you knit, you'd be bored to tears, unless you are fascinated by subculture the way that I am.

Interesting story of a persons year long journey of knitting a sweater. I enjoyed her discussion of the kinship of knitting, her trip to Rhinebeck and to Toronto more then the description of the kntting of the sweater. I did not realize that Toronto was such a haven for knitters - I have now put a visit to Toronto to my Bucket List.

This is a wonderful book about Adrienne's tale in knitting an Alice Starmore sweater, the holy grail of knitting. Though Adrienne does try to explain some knitting things to the muggles, aka non-knitters, it's obvious that only other crafters will really understand what it takes, and why, we would undertake a project such as this. She does a great job of explaining everything that goes into making a project of this size - from the little things like getting an audible subscription so she has something to knit to, from the larger things like finding substitute yarn.

Along the way, Adrienne is lucky enough to do a lot of traveling & meets lots of other knitters, including Ann & Kaye from Mason Dixon knitting, who are among my personal show more knitting favorites. She also gets into some history behind both Starmore & fair isle knitting, the latter which I was familiar with & the former I was not.

In the end, the result is something that probably wouldn't surprise any knitters & is something we've all gone through with any knitting or crocheting project near & dear to our hearts.

I may or may not have received a review copy for free - I have no memories of receiving or buying this book, & there are no price stickers on it anywhere. show less

As mentioned by previous reviewers, this book really isn't about knitting a difficult sweater, as its premise indicates it will be about. Rather, it's about a knitter's musings about knitting and the knitting community during the year in which she knits a famously difficult sweater. I'm a beginning knitter so a lot of what she said was new and interesting to me and I really enjoyed the book, but I certainly do agree that the book wasn't about what it purported it would be about.

If you knit - if you love reading Yarn Harlot - if you enjoy listening to the musing and angst of another knitter - you should read this book. I felt Adrienne's pain, knew the trials and tribulations that she was going through. Even after finishing the book and knowing in my heart that the project sitting in the closet these last 6 years should, by all rights, sit there for 6 more, thanks to Adrienne I'm going to drag it out and get it done. We all need that "legacy" project, if only to teach us some humility.