Hey, Kids! It's Toe-Up! Time

I am so pleased to share with you an interview I did with Chrissy Gardiner about her book, Toe-Up! Patterns and Worksheets to Whip your Sock Knitting into Shape (and other things I wanted to know about designing).

What made you decide to write a book rather than simply present the designs as individual patterns in your line?
It's so much easier to present a wealth of technique information in book format - in Toe-Up! I give 50+ pages of technical stuff that compliments all of the patterns. With an individual pattern, if you don't want them to each be 15 pages long (and almost as expensive as a book but with only one design in them), you need to really condense the technical info or leave it out all together, which means people have to seek it out elsewhere.

Some sock books want you to knit socks exactly the way they tell you to and others want to show you every toe and heel option ever invented. You seem to have struck a balance. How did you decide which toes/heels to present in your book?
When outlining the book, things started to fall in groups of 3, which felt like such a reasonable number. So I decided to pick my favorite 3 heels and toes and go from there. Of course, I had to add in a few "modifications" so there are a couple ways to do the round toe and the afterthought heel, for example.

I love the Dude Abides sock. What kinds of things inspire you to come up with a new design?
I get inspired by yarns, colorways, sticks on the sidewalk, movies, sweaters I see on people at the coffee shop...all sorts of stuff! I will also spend hours poring over my stitch dictionaries trying to come up with fun ways to combine stitches, tweak stitch patterns for a new effect, or find the absolute perfect stitch for a particular yarn or colorway. I spend a lot of time swatching, ripping, tweaking, reswatching, ripping, and tweaking again before I settle on the final design.

What does Bill think about pictures of his feet being on bookshelves around the country? :)
Well, I've never actually asked him, but I'm sure he'd say that if it helps sell books, he's all for it! He was a great sport through all of the photography sessions and now helps with all of the shipping (I refer to him as my Shipping Department) and management of inventory (which involves hours of fun moving boxes around the house as they arrive from the printer and then get sent out to yarn shops and distributors).

My other favorite sock is Fjordland. I took your colorwork class at Sock Summit (wow)--can we expect more Bohus-style textured colorwork from you in the future?
You betcha! I plan to write a book about textured colorwork one of these days, hopefully before someone else does (although that's not looking likely since I've gotten so distracted by socks). In the meantime, I hope to keep designing single patterns and occasional book & magazine submissions inspired by this technique. I really love it!

What other designers do you admire and why?
I love Kate Gilbert for her simple-yet-unexpected and incredibly stylish designs. I love Pam Allen for her beautiful, classic design aesthetic. I love Nancy Bush and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts for their detailed explorations into ethnic knitting. I love Janet Szabo for her amazing classic aran sweater designs. I love Janel Laidman and Miriam Felton for telling such great stories with their knits. That's just a few - there are so many amazing designers working right now!

This is totally not sock related (or maybe it is?), but what is involved in sizing patterns? Is it purely a numbers game, or are there certain proportion differences that you have to account for?
It's a bit of a numbers game and a lot of finesse. I start out with my standard sizing measurements, which I've put together based on the CYA standards and a number of different books. I then have to take gauge, any unusual shaping or lack of shaping (i.e. fitted waist vs tunic style), stitch pattern counts, etc. into account. When sizing my plus-sized versions, it's a delicate balance to make sure that the bust and underarms have enough room while not adding yards of bulky fabric to the sleeves - when sizes get bigger, you don't necessarily increase all schematic measurements by a set percent. Plus size women don't have super-long arms, for example! It's always a fun exercise in creativity (okay, exercise=always, fun=not always so much...)

I know you put a lot of work into your designs. How many people "touch" one of your patterns before it is published (i.e. test knitters, tech editors, etc.)?
Each pattern is usually tested by a couple people once I've got it down on paper. I knit a lot of the samples myself, but occasionally I will have at least one sample knit by one of my highly-skilled and wonderful sample knitters. Once I get feedback from the testers, I incorporate their comments, go over the math one last time, and then send it to my two tech editors for the final review. Generally, between 3 and 5 people besides myself are involved in some aspect of the patterns that I design. I've got a growing number of patterns in the line designed by others, so this would add the designer as one additional person who touches the pattern before I get my claws into it.

Is there a pattern floating around in your head that you have never been able to materialize for some reason?
Well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you... No, seriously, I've usually got several ideas rolling around in my brain at any given time, and if they stay there, I generally get around to them eventually. I don't really have any ideas that I haven't been able to materialize for any reason other than lack of time.

Any hints you can give us about upcoming projects?
I just spent a week up in the beautiful San Juan Islands of Washington at Cat Bordhi's Visionary Retreat for self-publishing authors. I brought my Gardiner Yarn Works business partner Donna with me, and we spent a lot of time refining the idea for the next book (which I will mainly author with lots of assistance from Donna). There are still a lot of details to work out, but it will be another sock book - this one will provide a "peek behind the curtain" by delving into my design process as well as the dyeing process of several indie dyers/yarn artisans. It will include dyer profiles, peeks into how they find their color inspiration, how they got started in the business, and a sock designed by me specifically for their yarn. We'll also talk about how I draw my design inspiration from a particular yarn and some of the issues I run into while figuring out what to make with hand-dyed yarns.

Wow--thanks so much, Chrissy. You're welcome back anytime!

And the fun doesn't stop here, folks! Win your very own copy of Toe-Up! by leaving a comment stating why you'd like one of the two copies Chrissy has so generously donated--and I'll draw two names at random Monday morning (so make sure you leave a working email, please).

You can find the entire list of tour stops on her blog and a virtual fashion show of all the socks in the book at the Official Toe-Up! Website.

p.s. There's a Toe-Up! knitalong going on over at the Ravelry group. We're knitting the Mix and Match Rib socks for February. I'm doing the bamboo rib in a gorgeous Blue Moon Rare Gem and loving it!