(wow, I need to post more often!  That’s one of my goals for 2013, so stay tuned for more frequent updates!)

This is Pinion, a cardigan I designed for Twist Collective’s Winter 2012 issue. See it on Ravelry here, or on Twist Collective here.

The inspiration came directly from TC’s mood boards, a collection of pictures that they send out to designers as part of their Call for Submissions for each issue. This mood board included several photos of birds and feathers, and that was the primary image floating around in my head as I was imagining possible designs to swatch and submit.

(I love how well this sweater fits the model, with the waist shaping in exactly the right place! This doesn’t always happen, as I am knitting up a general size rather than to a specific model’s measurements, so I am always pleased when it turns out perfectly!)

Pinion’s structure (a top-down sweater with radiating motifs spreading from the collar onto the yoke) is similar to a design that I had already knit up. That one is destined for self-publishing later this year and has a very simple box motif suitable for first-time stranded knitters, but knowing that I was designing for Twist Collective’s readers let me throw in a few tweaks that would happily challenge more experienced knitters.

Most colourwork designs are made up of pixels, each little box being a single knit stitch worked in colour A or colour B. When I was thinking about feathers, I wanted swooping curves and flowing lines, not boxes and jagged edges, so I started combining colourwork with cabling, and a swatch was born!

My submission was accepted, and the Halcyon yarn arrived shortly after. This is the same yarn I was given for Thornia, and I think it is perfect for steeked projects: nice and grippy, with great blockability! I think Pinion was actually the easiest start-to-finish knit that I’ve done for Twist Collective (Boundless, Lara and Candlewick are in competition for the hardest) so the finished sample sweater flew off my needles with enough time left over for me to make a variation for myself!

This is my version of Pinion:

It was somewhat influenced by the sweaters knit by the Cowichan people of Vancouver Island, as I wanted a big, chunky sweater but didn’t want to use their traditional imagery or motif layout as I am not of First Nations descent. I really liked the feathers of Pinion, so after working a swatch consisting of two strands of Cascade 220 and one strand of Drops Alpaca (YUM!), I crunched the numbers and figured that the instructions for the smallest size would work with my gauge to make me an oversized knitted coat to wear through the winter, layered over a lightweight hoodie. A cozy hood and generous pockets were also part of my modifications, and I’m super happy with how they turned out.

I had also been looking at a lot of watercolour paintings of bird plumage, and planned to use an undyed cream yarn for my contrast colour, so the feathers would eventually be painted with acid dyes!

It worked.. right up to the point where I had to admit that I have very little experience dyeing wool, and had no idea why my colours were going on as I had imagined but disappearing overnight to leave me with weirdly tinted feathers the next morning.

After working on it for about three days, I finally achieved a result I could live with, and steam-set the whole thing using a giant canning pot on my stove. There must have been another level of failure in my skills, as the sweater acquired a rusty orange blotch across the right pocket (you can see its edge on the front buttonband trim) but I am still happy wearing it out and about.

A handful of testers helped us catch glitches in the pattern prior to publication, and have provided additional inspiration for you! See everyone’s Pinion project pages on Ravelry here, and some additional ideas about styling Pinion on the Twist Collective blog here.

Need help with the embroidery for the feather shafts? I made a tutorial video!
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Happy knitting!

(insert a ton of detail photos I took before sending the sample off to Twist Collective for photography)

(also please include some text telling you all about my design process and enthusiasm for this cardigan)

My computer crashed tonight… In a big, no-whirring, no-display kind of way (!!!!!!!!) and while the recent addition of a shiny new iPad to my house (reward for a week of teaching lifeguard courses during Spring Break) lets me at least look at the pretty pictures over at Twist Collective and on Ravelry, it doesn’t let me access the stuff on my hard drive.

Please wish me luck - in the grand scheme of life, this is no biggie, and I am totally aware that I have been gifted with a wonderful life… But it would be nice to have my hard drive and desktop machine back. Hope C can work some magic for me tomorrow!

I’ve been a fan of Tom Bihn since I was gifted a Swift by my bosses at Three Bags Full several years ago, and their product videos were the inspiration for the ShopCasts that I record for the store every week!

Whenever the crew at TB put out a call for participation (testing out Vulcana fabric, or receiving selvedge scraps of their Dyneema fabric for a crafting challenge), I would jump at the chance… and I also chatted with them via Twitter whenever I saw a TB bag around town or if my Swift had had a mention-worthy adventure!

Their invitation to review the line of knitting bags was a very pleasant surprise, and I was even happier when they added an Imago and Field Journal Notebook to the shipment at my request - you’ll see why I wanted to include these as “knitting tools” in their reviews!

I love Tom Bihn shows off the TB gear I had acquired on my own over a few years.

The Swift

The Little Swift

The Field Journal Notebook
(since recording this, I have received the graph paper insert, and it is AWESOME!)

The Imago


Organizer Pouches


Yarn Stuff Sacks

I want to thank all of you for following my blog. One of the few resolutions I am making for 2012 is to be more consistent with updates and posts, so you will be seeing more of me in the upcoming months!

(Whoops! I just noticed that I have failed to blog about Corinth and Thornia… too many projects on the go, I’m slipping! I’ll put those at the head of the queue for 2012.)

To celebrate the holidays (and maybe give you something fun to knit for yourself once gift-knitting is over?), I’m offering a 50% discount code for all patterns in my Ravelry store until December 31st. The code is “happyholidays” which can either be typed in when prompted as you finish shopping, or you can follow this link to go directly to your Ravelry shopping cart and then choose to add patterns from there.

Sorry, this sale doesn’t include any of my Twist Collective or Interweave patterns due to my contractual obligations!

This is Asher, from Twist Collective’s Fall 2011 issue, find it on Ravelry here.

Asher came to life after a trip to Portland in June 2010, with an hour (possibly more) spent at Yarnia combining a bunch of thin strands of yarn together to make myself a custom blend of chunky goodness. I didn’t have a plan for it at the time aside from “big cozy sweater” but swatching with it while on the train ride home eventually suggested that it liked the slip-stitch rib pattern I used for a simple scarf design, Picker’s Delight.

I also realized that the second yarn I had created at Yarnia, a blend of smooth strands that made a worsted weight yarn, coordinated nicely with its chunky sibling, and I started playing with combinations. Eventually, the yoke design was born, with garter stitch, concentric increases, and contrast piping to separate each ring. A needle size change helped the garter move smoothly into the slip-stitch rib, and I was off!

Okay, truth? That sweater is still in that state of completion (or lack thereof). When I got the thumbs-up from Twist Collective after submitting this photo and sketch, I did my usual squeal and happy dance, and then promptly sought out a more commercially available yarn that would work. A shipment of Cascade 220 had been delivered to Three Bags Full, and in the process of unpacking, pricing, and stocking the new colours, this purplish grey caught my eye and stuck. The purplish brown was a good choice for the contrast trim, and both came home with me that night.

The biggest difference between my second prototype and the sample for the magazine? Weight. Cascade 220 held doubled is HEAVY… which can be pretty wonderful if you think that heavy + warm = perfect (I do!), but the gorgeous Berkshire Bulky from Valley Yarns knit up into a light and lofty sweater that would still trap heat but rest more easily on one’s shoulders! I loved the colour combination that Kate sent me, and was happy to knit the sample version as soon as mine was off my needles.

In case you can’t see it in the design lines, I was pretty inspired by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Her love of the knit stitch calls to me - I have made two adult-sized Surprise Jackets, and one (so far) in the original baby size, and because I knit continental style, the slipped-rib pattern used here doesn’t feel at all like working a purl stitch. Jared Flood’s version of her TomTen design was also in the back of my head - I love the contrast shoulder lines he created!

Some mods: my prototype has all of the contrast lines done as piping: four rows of stockingette stitch with a single strand of Cascade 220 which are then closed to make a rounded trim line (see Piper and Lallans for more of this accent), and a row of piping on the back of the hood just before the shaping begins. I designed a tab for the back, but haven’t actually sewn this on yet! Last one: because I’m on the busty side (in case you hadn’t noticed from that photo!), I shifted the break for the sleeves back a little bit on each side, so my front width is wider than my back width.

Vancouver has been having a wonderful Autumn, with many days of crisp sunshine and cool evenings spaced between the rainy drizzle that we know and love (or at least accept..), and Asher is the perfect outer layer to pop on over a tshirt and still be snuggly warm. I love the giant pockets and hood in this weather, and am designing more sweaters with these features!

Last shot: this was the set of the photo shoot that produced all of the detailed photos above, plus many that I will be using to update designs already on Ravelry as well as some new accessory patterns. My friend Andrew is a talented photographer, and we have been trading skills: I am teaching him American Sign Langauge basics, in exchange for pictures like these. Oh, see that sweater on the mannequin? It is destined for self-publishing soonish, drop me a line at christa@christaknits.com if you’re interested in test-knitting for me!

.. and I have two (!!) patterns in it, my first garments for Twist!

1) Boundless, a complex-cabled cape, on Twist and on Ravelry

2) Asher, a simple, joy-to-knit garter and slibbed-rib sweater coat, on Twist and on Ravelry

I’m working hard to meet another design deadline fast approaching, but I will share more on the creation of these two pieces another time!

To celebrate Ravelry’s newly created Promotions coding for shopkeepers, I’m offering a 20% discount off all patterns in my shop starting today (yay Casey!) and going through to the end of my birthday (midnight on Sunday Sep 19th, yay me!)

There will be a box for a discount code at some point during your transaction, just type “CASEYROCKS” for the 20% off deal.

Visit my Ravelry shop here.

Enjoy!

The following is an email conversation that I had with Shannon Okey, who recently wrote and published The KnitGrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design. Shannon kindly provided me with a review copy, and if you read all the way down past the interview, you’ll see how my design business has already grown from the advice she gave!

Christa: Hi Shannon! I’ve followed your blog tour - interesting interviews! I liked how different bloggers had a different focus to their questions, based on where they themselves were in their designing career. I’m still quite new to design and have just started getting published in the last year, so some of my questions will be coming from that angle!

If you were to make a graph to show the various things you do to generate income, how does your “minimum to maximum effort or time committment” chart of various work tasks relate to your “minimum to maximum financial gain” chart? Are you happy with your current balance, or is there something you’d like to shift more time towards?


Shannon: THAT is a good question. I always make more money when a project involves more writing than knitting, because I am spectacularly fast writing-wise, and not so much knitting-wise. I wish I was a superspeedy knitter, but I’m not. So if there is an article to be written, or a book, or… that’s going to be less time for more money. Of course, with the knitting, once that pattern is done and published, it can generate income infinitely — something magazine articles don’t do!

C: Chapter 12 in your book has amazing interviews with other designers talking about how they work… can you paint us a picture of how YOU work? Do you structure your day/week/month with specific to-do lists, or bounce around doing whatever work you feel like doing, or…? Do you hit spikes of frenzied activity through the year, or is it all fairly steady? Oh, and relating to a discussion happening in the Designers forum on Ravelry, do you ever make things from other people’s designs? How do you balance work knitting with personal knitting?



S: I can’t even tell you when the last time I knit something from someone else’s pattern. And that’s not to sound snotty — I WANT to, I just don’t have TIME to — so I’ve been steadily accumulating a collection of Things To Knit When I Have Time. When that ‘when’ will be, I do not know.

As a general rule, I’ve usually got short term, medium term and long term projects going at any given time. Short time is stuff with deadlines in the next week or two, medium is a few months out, long term is “longer than that or when I get to it.” This also intersects with other peoples’ own project deadlines. So, while Hunter (Hammersen, who is currently doing a sock book for Cooperative Press) is aiming to have her book’s text done (and me editing it!) in the next month or so, there are also longer-term things on the agenda such as getting the photos done, finishing the layout, etc. What this means in all reality is checking today’s to-do list and finishing as many things as I can, and adding to the list as I go along. It’s neverending!

C: I’ve been getting some opportunities to work with print and online magazines and knitting book authors lately, and I’ve been making some rookie mistakes along the way. Thankfully, I have also had my apologies accepted and am learning from these experiences! In your work as a publisher, what are some unforgivable mistakes that would keep you from giving a designer a second chance? Is there a higher level of exceptionally poor behavior that would have you actively warn your publishing peers away from working with someone?



S: Refusing to use the yarn the magazine sent and actually sending it back without any consultation. Now, I’ve been in a position where a yarn isn’t the nicest yarn ever — Nicky Epstein put it best, you have to be willing to work with everything from acrylic to cashmere — but the only time I’ve told the editor “sorry, I can’t work with this” was when the yarn was actually a PROBLEM. Not “I don’t like it” but “if this pattern is knit with this yarn, THIS bad thing will happen and your readers will be very sad.” And a good editor will come back and say ok, “what do you suggest?”, or “how can we fix that, then?” Look, if acrylic is good enough for Nicky Epstein, you can sure as hell put up with it, too! So I think that petty, demanding behavior that doesn’t have some solid reasoning behind it is pretty much a dealbreaker.

C: I’m curious about designing for mass production, being the person who knits swatches and then sells them to apparel producers (at least, that’s how I have heard it works!). Do you have any experience in this area to share, or links to resources for designers who want to add this revenue stream to their work?



S: I don’t have much experience with this but from what little I know about it, you’d probably have a better shot at this kind of work if you lived in New York or another major garment manufacturing city — if I was running Ralph Lauren’s knitwear division, I’d probably favor the people who could talk to me on the phone and pop by the office the next day with the sample.

C: Now that the Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design has been published and out for reviews and readers to buy, is there anything that you wish you would have added or emphasized more in the book? Is there an update or Vol 2 or a companion workbook coming down the pipeline?



S: I think that an updated edition would be likely in a year or so because no doubt some of the technology will have changed by then. The beauty of having so many people purchasing the book digitally is that sending out updates is not only possible, but easy! There are some other related books coming down the pipeline but not for a little while yet…

Thanks, Christa!



C: Thanks so much, Shannon!

---

The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design is worth its weight in gold: it doesn’t teach you anything about designing with ease, grading patterns, or shaping a sleeve cap, but you will learn everything you need to know about the background work that a knitwear designer does to be successful!

Managing social media, using professional organizations, submitting to magazines, writing book proposals, providing customer support, dealing with printers, developing wholesale relationships… it’s all here, and presented in a friendly, easy-to-read format that feels like a sit-down chat with Shannon (and the dozens of industry professionals that she interviews in Chapter 12!)

My own journey of design included a wonderful mentorship with Kim Werker (we swapped her business guru-ship for some of my hoop dance classes) which got me to the point of submitting proposals to Twist Collective and Interweave Knits. Now that I’ve been published with Twist, Knitscene, and have a few patterns coming out in other people’s books in 2011, I was at a bit of a loss for figuring out the next step. Thanks to Shannon’s book and the conversation we had, I now have a contract in hand for my first knitting article!

Shannon points out that patterns have the potential to generate income for a lifetime, where magazine articles don’t… but I was shocked (and excited!) to find out that an article pays nearly the same as a fairly simple sweater pattern.. without the time spent knitting!

I am already plotting future article ideas (some with accompanying designs, some without), and figuring out the best publisher for each… and I’m thrilled! Next on my list: bump up the frequency of my blog posts, get back into podcasting, and figure out the balance of self-publishing and submissions that will work best for me and my empire-building! (Hee!)

Thanks again, Shannon - this has been awesome!

Visit Shannon’s blog for the other stops along her blog tour!

Hi everyone!

Summer has been delightful so far! Here’s an update on where I’m at:

My Typha shawl is about to come out in the Fall 2010 Knitscene.

I’ve got another pattern coming out soon in an online pub (you know the one…) and a third possibly getting into the following issue.

My first full garment design has been commissioned for a print mag for next year, and I’m waiting for the yarn to be delivered.

I have two garments on the needles that may become self-published at some point, along with a few hat and cowl ideas.

I’m preparing ideas to become online video lessons (a class for knitting Piper, another for the textured swatch class I taught for years, a third for the advanced vintage sewing techniques translated to knitting that I’m teaching live this fall at Vancouver’s Maiwa textile symposium.

I’m reading through Shannon Okey’s KnitGrrl guide to professional knitwear design, and preparing a review for a future podcast.

..and, our home renos are at a point where I’ve just been able to clear out a room to become my office, and my sweetie has just bought a bunch of gorgeous birch-faced plywood to turn into pretty boxes that will stack and become shelving for all of my yarn collection, in my future craft studio! Wooot!

In hooping life, I’m mid-summer festival, getting ready for the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next weekend (I volunteer in the Info Booth, and am organizing a bunch of hoopers and jugglers to perform/teach in the Little Folks area) and also planning workshops for the fall.

.. and life is good!

How are you? What’s happening in your life that should be shared and celebrated?

Wow, so much has happened since my last post!

January - I was hit by a kidney infection, and didn’t give myself nearly enough recovery time once I knew what it was (”I FEEL better, so the drugs must be working, so I can go back to work, right?”).. so it hung on for the better part of January and into February. This made renovations really tough - have you ever tried to stay in bed while your partner works day and night to get the house in shape for guests.. after you thought it would be a good idea to tear the bathroom out down to bare studs and floor joists just one month previous? Hard. Hard hard hard. Poor C, he worked his hands raw retiling the last week, and then pulled an all-nighter right before Lolly and Kris arrived, making sure that we actually had a sink and toilet in place, and that the new tiles were grouted and caulked. I was feeling better by that point, but still gave myself 3 hours of sleep that night so I wouldn’t be a miserable zombie greeting them at the door!

Sooo.. that puts us in mid-February: Lolly and Kris are with us (and they’re AWESOME, so it was a great two weeks of getting to know them and hang out and compare notes), the Olympics are in full swing, I’m feeling better, and C is ready to NOT work on the house… so we had a good time wandering the city, checking out some of the Olympic events, going out with friends again, and just relaxing at home watching the Games. Did you know that those old rabbit ear antennea work for picking up digital airwaves? CTV was broadcasting in High Def, and we could pick it up for free (no cable subscription in this household)!

March felt like a gradual return to normal, though Vancouver itself was abnormal: We’ve had spring since early February (you might have heard of our problems keeping the snow around for the ski hills), and there was a post-party slump going on - sad to see that most of the special events and pavillions that were here for the Olympics were in total take-down mode as the Paralympians were coming to town. After being off from waterpolo for the better part of three months, I returned to practices and slowly started regaining my cardio conditioning, to the point where I now don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack after three minutes of passing the ball! I’m not quite up to full speed yet, but I can do the whole 1.5 hour practice without having to take a break (though I’m still quite happy to sub out during our scrimmages).

April has been delightful! The weather is hit-or-miss, so I’ve been scoping out some decent rain pants for cycling, while also knitting up more strapless tops for summer, and I’m currently in the middle of a summer cardigan knit with DK weight wool. We’re returning to some home-care action, and having visitors last weekend had us put in a decent amount of cleaning effort that looks so much nicer as sunshine streams in through the windows!

Design-wise, this has been an exciting time: I participated in the Ravelympics, and published a hat called Whipped Lolly (see the photo above) to win gold in the Designer Biathlon; I’ve had two requests for hat designs to go into books (woo!); a shawl that I had started for myself turned out to be just the thing that a magazine needed for their Fall issue; and I’ve just heard that another hat design has been accepted to an online publication, hooray! In self-publishing land, the strapless top and the cardigan I’m working on now are both potential patterns - I need to practice scaling the designs into a wide range of sizes, and then get them out to a bunch of test knitters so the patterns themselves will be safe to share!

Knitting classes are going well, hooping classes are picking up, my fall workshop for Maiwa is tickling the back of my brain, and online lessons are percolating, too! All in all, I’m having a lovely spring!

How’s yours?