I finished a book today!

It took me almost 12 weeks to read, so I am calling this closure a Christmas Miracle. (Remember when we were in top Lit Major condition in college and we’d read three or four books a week?) Now a twelve-week read with a new baby in the house is rapid pace for me.

I loved this book. I picked it up on a whim at the thrift store, which was hopeful and delusional considering my track record with reading since becoming a mom. Unless we count picture books about tractors, trucks and diggers; I have read thousands of those in the past three years. I practically have an advanced degree in heavy machinery identification. You think everything is a digger until you have a little boy and you learn that there is a big difference between a front-end loader and a backhoe. But I digress…

But this book is about something that I am actually interested in: knitting. It is called Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously by Adrienne Martini. It was my kind of book: part memoir (she weaves her story through one project – knitting a Fair Isle style sweater) and part focused history of knitting. I love a good focused history, which is why I own the following books (their simple titles should let you know what they are about): Oranges, Salt, Bananas and Snow. Of course I have only read one of them (Oranges was fascinating) but Salt, Bananas and Snow … I am coming for you, someday.

Sweater Quest was funny and light and I learned so much about my own knitting by reading it. I am decent knitter, but I just kind of lucked into it without much knowledge of what I was doing. I just discovered that I knit “continental style.” Good to know. I learned that a lot of why I knit and how I knit is actually shared by many other knitters.

City Mama, have you read this book? I hope not, because I am sending it your way all marked up with thoughts and notes so we can “converse” about it. I am hoping that if you get to read it in the next 12 weeks (or hell, 12 years) you will mark it up and send it back to me.

Passing notes, mama style.