What excites you about the GAL?
I lurked my first year, and last year was my first year as a designer. What I have come to love and find so amazing about the GAL is the amazing camaraderie and encouragement.
What’s your favourite part?
Finding new to me designers and designs, and getting to knit other people’s patterns instead of working on my own.
What makes you excited about being a designer?
I love the creative process. I am a homemaker and homeschooling mother and so often, I do the same thing every day, and it isn’t finished at the end of the day, and then I repeat it all the next day. It is also creative work, but I don’t get to see how it turns out for decades. Designing fulfills my creative urge, and gives me a product I can see in a much shorter time!
What part of the process do you find rewarding?
Seeing my idea come to fruition in an actual, three dimensional object. It still amazes me that knitters and crocheters take a line, basically, with yarn and thread, and make three dimensional creations
What inspires you?
What doesn’t inspire me? I find inspiration in nature, in ideas, in my children, but I also find it in the mundane. I’ve created a cable from a motel comforter pattern before.
Are you a full-time or part-time designer?
I am a part time designer. My day job is homemaker, wife, mother of eight, and homeschooling mama extraordinaire.
Does the place you live affect how or what you design?
The weather does. I find a lot of inspiration in weather patterns and clouds. Our former home was on salt water with beach and trees and mountains in view, which gave me more to work with, in some ways, but the weather here is fascinating.
What’s your favourite thing to design?
By percentage, I’d say hats. I really enjoy designing garments, but they take me more time to get from concept to pattern, so I have done only a few.
Are you a big gift knitter?
Almost every baby born to our acquaintance gets a gift. Everything else goes to my immediate family or me. I made a decision a long time ago that my kids wouldn’t learn from my actions that their wishes would be set aside for me to knit for others.
What’s your favourite knitting to give?
Anything appreciated, really. I want people to use or wear what I make them.
If someone were to knit you a present, what would you most love to receive?
Socks! I love hand knit socks, but I rarely get a chance to make them for myself.
Tell us about your favourite yarn.
Ooooh! This is hard! I have so many favorites. It’s usually the yarn I’m working with at that moment. Or something that was discontinued five minutes ago.
What’s one thing about being a designer that surprised you?
How much not designing I would be doing. I have become a copy writer, a publicist, an advertising agent, a model, a photographer, a photo editor, photo stylist, you name it, I do it! My husband has been recruited as my photographer most of the time, but I do a lot of it still.
