People do many a things to meet their passion of travel and here in a distinctive case someone knits sweaters to fuel his love for traveling.
43 year old, Sam Barsky, a resident of Baltimore is stitching up sweaters since almost 20 years. If you think that he stitches sweaters to make money for his passion then you will be off beam ; rather his sweaters are based on famous tourist sights. What adds to the story is that, after finishing one sweater based on tourist destinations,he takes photos of himself wearing them at the actual destinations.
Harbouring such a rare hobby, Barsky got his inspiration from a picture he saw in a magazine. At first he just feel like making something like this, but once he goes on with this hobby, he developed a desire to visit the places which he is interlacing on his sweaters.
Remembering his first creation Barsky said, “The first sweater I made of a specific landmark was the Tower Bridge in London.” Thereafter he proceeds with landmarks, like the Golden Gate Bridge and Venice. Out of 132 sweaters, his first actual trip materialized at Stonehenge and then he visited almost every place he has knitted, from the Western Wall and Niagara Falls to the Chicago skyline and the Hollywood sign.
But there are a few locations which are knitted on his sweaters but haven’t been visited by him yet. As Barsky says, “I haven’t been to Egypt or France so my pyramid and Eiffel Tower photos were both taken in Las Vegas at the Luxor and Paris.”
He has made sweaters depicting Rocky Mountain National Park, Mt. Washington, the Gateway Arch, Pikes Peak/Garden of the Gods and Carnegie Hall In the past year alone.
After being dropped out of nursing school in 1999, Barsky had a chance to meet the owners of a local yarn shop. On his request, they accepted him to teach on the condition of buying his own yarn from them. Barsky began knitting the same year.
In the beginning, he used to make his sweaters after visiting a place and got inspired by it. But now he tries to make them before he reach a location so that he can take a photo of himself in that particular site.
Traveling as a passion, has not only honoured him with a different identity, it makes him to find his wife Deborah who shares the same passion though Deborah is not a knitter like Barsky. He said, he had tried to get her into it but she had no interest and so he did not pressurise her; instead, he knitted some skirts, dresses, vests and scarves for her.
Barsky has a long-term goal of knitting at least one sweater representing each of the 50 states, and featuring landmarks like Space Needle, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore and the Liberty Bell. Regarding international icons, he also has plans to feature the Sydney Opera House, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Machu Picchu on his sweaters. It takes him about a month to finish each sweater.
Being different, sometimes he finds his job challenging too. With urban scenes, his sweaters depicting Times Square and the Las Vegas Strip were among the most challenging ones to knit, says Barsky. However, for him, these challenges are worth taking, for the support of the tens of thousands of fans who now follow his work and his travels on Instagram and Facebook and who request to take a photo with him wearing his sweaters if they happen to run into him while he’s wearing one of them.
When in 2017, on one social media, the pictures of Barsky’s sweaters went viral, the normal knitter turned into an unlikely superstar. Now this, along with selling calendars and prints of his sweaters becomes his full-time job. Also he teaches at the yarn stores and makes guest appearances as ‘The Sweater Guy’, occasionally.
At times, when asked, if he is interested in selling his creations, he simply denies the fact, for not being feasible at the moment, saying, he would be a “human sweater mill” with this. Regarding mass production, he is hoping to have it in future and work with technically skilled persons to write pattenrs for his work. However, for now, it is the image of him wearing his sweater in its matching sites, is his ultimate gift.
Source:Forbes
