Sweater Quest

February 1, 2010
A writer, professor, and mother with a penchant for “obsessively knitting,” Martini has spent plenty of time putting needles to yarn. In fact, she explains, knitting was central to her emergence from the postpartum depression she chronicled in 2006's Hillbilly Gothic: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood
. Several years and a second child later, she's looking for a new level of knitting challenge, not to mention fodder for this second memoir. Her trademark humor and honesty make for an engaging read (for example, she writes, “Both kids and craft have taught me how to deal with frustration so acute that I'd want to bite the head off a kitten”). Despite that, her grand knitting/writing project for 2008 was an Alice Starmore Fair Isle sweater, for its complexity of pattern, colors, and knitting technique. Martini casts on and explores the history of knitting, details visits and calls to fellow knitters near and far, and describes Starmore's determination to protect her brand and copyright. It's a lively, interesting blend of personal quest, knitting history and Starmore biography certain to appeal to knitters—and to readers who enjoy taking on (or reading about) a worthy personal challenge.

January 21, 2010
After her memoir on postpartum depression, Hillbilly Gothic, Martini recounts her efforts to knit a famously difficult Fair Isle sweater from an out-of-print book by the withdrawn "Litigious Scottish Designer" Alice Starmore. Martini intersperses her year-of narrative with a brief history of Fair Isle knitting, quotations from well-known knitters on why people knit, and the story of Starmore's rights battles. She humorously illustrates characteristics of knitters in a warm, relatable, unaffected tone. This will appeal to knitters, active and one-time, and anyone who's picked up a passing interest in the craft via loved ones or Kate Jacobs's best-selling series and other portrayals.-Anna Katterjohn, Library Journal

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2010
Martini decided to knit the extraordinarily complicated Alice Starmore Fair Isle sweater pattern, known as Mary Tudor, and now chronicles her 12 months experience. Shades of Julie and Julia? Well, yes, but Martini offers a deeper, more reflective narrative, one that showcases her interactions with other well-known stitchers; her book features family snippets and personal philosophies and her travels to places where knitters congregate, such as Toronto and Rhinebeck, New York. We meet Ann Shayne, coauthor of Mason-Dixon Knitting (2006), as well as Amy R. Singer, Master of the Knitting Universe. We learn a lot about the craft (or is it an art?) from statistics and these profiles of major figures as well as achieve an understanding of the community that binds knitters together. Marveleven if youre a nonknitterat Martinis way with words: Scissors and knitting go together like mashed potatoes and chocolate syrup. Purling through life was never so fascinating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)