The "Sweater Curse" Dilemma

The "sweater curse" suggests that giving a hand-knit sweater to a significant other may lead to a breakup or relationship issues, a belief acknowledged by 15% of active knitters in a 2005 poll. Despite its name, the phenomenon is treated as a real-world pitfall in knitting literature, with proposed mechanisms including unlucky timing, the sweater serving as a catalyst for relationship analysis, aversion to hand-knit items, and misdirected attention.