Today’s interview is with Canadian designer Maureen Foulds, best known for her sock designs.

How did you get started designing?
I published my first sock pattern in 2010. I had found a luscious skein of HandMaiden sock yarn in purple and wanted a pattern that would really show the yarn off. Nothing I saw on Ravelry felt right, so I came up with my own design Trellis & Coin.

Then in 2012 I started designing more seriously, struck by sudden inspiration. Knitters responded very enthusiastically to my designs so I was encouraged to continue.

What inspires your designs?
Inspiration can come from anywhere. I’ve been inspired by nature, architecture, the pattern on a hotel bedspread, and a pair of gloves knit by my great-grandmother. Or, I start with a skein of yarn and start imagining what pattern would suit it best: something organic (leaves, curves) or structured (cables, angles). When I design for yarn clubs, the club theme is the stepping off point for inspiration.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
It really does vary with each design. For my second Agatha Christie collection, the Poirot series, it was definitely the yarn that came first. I visited the SweetGeorgia studio in Vancouver, BC and came away with over half a dozen skeins of their gorgeous sock yarns. So I decided to do a collection using entirely SweetGeorgia.

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
I try to design something that I would want to knit. Something which challenges my skills but isn’t too complicated. I try to balance new techniques with simplicity. In my collections I try to ensure there is a balance of ‘easier’ patterns and more challenging ones. I like to think of the collections as skill builders for less experienced sock knitters, while for more experienced knitters they’re a mix of lighter fare and really ‘meaty’ knits.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
Socks. Hands down. There are so many possibilities in that 1 skein of fingering weight yarn. So many colours to play with. A sock is basically the same construction no matter the pattern, but still has infinite possibilities. You can customize the cuff, the heel, the toe; knit it toe up or cuff down – all with the same basic design on the body of the sock.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
Ohhh! That’s a tough question. I don’t really have a favourite brand of yarn. I’ve been having so much fun exploring Indie Dyers over the past year or so and have found so many lovely yarns.

But any yarn I chose would have to have a tight twist, be superwash and a merino/nylon blend. And I very much prefer solids and semi-solids. I find that patterns tend to get lost in variegated yarn.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
Socks for sure, usually a plain sock with ribbing, maybe a recurring simple 2×2 or 1×1 cable thrown in for fun.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
Perhaps my Flying Buttress socks. These are fairly simple, with clean lines.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
Well, I’ve made 3 Howlcat cowls by Alex Tinsley and 2 cowls from Andi Smith’s Synchronicity collection. Three of those cowls are gifts. And I really want to knit the Polonaise Cowl by Cristina Ghirlanda – those cables look so luscious!

Continental or English?
English. That’s how I was taught.

What’s the best thing about knitting?
You can either lose yourself in knitting and think of nothing at all. Or you can use that knitting time to think through whatever’s on your mind. It’s so relaxing. And at the end of it all, you have something useful!

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Nothing is ‘too difficult’. All knitting is done 1 stitch at a time. It’s just variations of knits and purls. Everyone is clumsy and gets frustrated when learning a new technique. It just takes patience, practice and determination.

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
I want to make time to knit more of other people’s designs. I think I need that downtime and exposure to different ideas to maintain and refresh my creativity.

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View all of Maureen’s patterns here. All photos are copyright Maureen Foulds and used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s interview is with Linda Choo, an Ontario designer who creates stunning lace pieces. Linda’s daughter, Shaulaine White is both her model and is also a designer. It must run in the family!

How did you get started designing?
I have always changed patterns and seldom knit something as written unless it is a test knit. Most of my sweater patterns (and sock) were done from scratch to match my size and gauge. Writing things up seemed a natural evolution. I started designing lace shawls geared towards the beginner lace knitter. I used them for teaching at a LYS.

What inspires your designs?
Most of my designs are inspired by something in our garden. It can be a plant, texture, colour, or mood.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
Usually the inspiration comes first and the yarn is chosen to suit it. Less often, but sometimes the design is inspired by a special yarn or handspun.

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
My designs are usually lace and sometimes a texture. I love Estonian lace stitches and use them often. My designs often look more difficult than they actually are to knit.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
It used to be shawls, but I am now venturing into socks, cowls and fingerless gloves.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
If I had to pick one, I would say my handspun laceweight.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
Probably socks. If I am particularly stressed, I revert to fairly plain sweater knitting, where I can just focus on the yarn and the process.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
My Estonian Garden series of shawls seem to have the fewest projects. Maybe the combination of nupps and entrelac is a bit intimidating to many.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
I haven’t really decided yet, since i am in the middle of a series of test knits for another designer, Romi. Once I am done with those, I will likely go and look for a sweater design to knit up.

Continental or English?
English

What’s the best thing about knitting?
The process itself and feeling the yarn. That is why I love spinning so much. Life is too short to waste on substandard fibre.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Knitting is a great stress reliever. It has kept me sane through the years. Well, relatively sane.

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
I have spent the last 6 months or so on socks and other accessories. I want to get back to several shawl ideas. I am also toying with the idea of writing up some of my sweater designs.

The main resolution is to organise my stash and get some of it used.

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View all of Linda’s patterns here. All photos are copyright Linda Choo. All images used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s Gift-A-Long interview is with Laura Chau. Laura began her designing career while working at a well-known yarn shop in Toronto, Ontario.

How did you get started designing?
I began working in a yarn shop not long after I started knitting seriously in university. I learned a lot while I was there and was inspired to design my own sweater when I couldn’t find the pattern for what I had in my head! That idea was my first self-published pattern, Lucy in the Sky.

What inspires your designs?
I mostly design things that fill a gap in my wardrobe. I do keep an eye out for interesting details and constructions in everything from current fashion to interior design and architecture.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
It depends. When I worked in the LYS, I would see lots of different yarns and would try to come up with an idea to use it for. But these days I’m often asked to come up with the idea first and match it with a yarn later, or I’ll need to order yarn for an idea because I don’t have it in my stash!

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
I always try to design items that are fun to knit and comfortable to wear. I like stitches that are easy to memorize, so you don’t always have to keep looking at the pattern.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
Definitely sweaters! I love wearing them, I love knitting them.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
Oooh that’s a tough one. I love Koigu.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
Stockinette sweaters all the way!

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
I don’t get to knit much by other people, but I love Light Trails by Suvi Simola and Krewe by Lee Meredith.

Continental or English?
Continental.

What’s the best thing about knitting?
I love that it’s a slow process that builds something bigger. Good metaphor for life, or something. On the practical side, I love that it can be ripped out and started again if you need to!

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Keep at it and enjoy the process. Don’t settle for making things you don’t like!

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
I don’t make a lot of resolutions, but every year I want to be happier and more productive with my work than the year before!

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View all of Laura’s patterns here. All photos are copyright Laura Chau. All images used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s interview is with crochet designer Beth Graham. Beth is another local designer and friend of mine. Her patterns have been featured in several crochet design books, as well as through her independently released designs.

How did you get started designing?
After I began teaching crochet at my local yarn shop, Shall We Knit?, owner Karen Crouch suggested that I make up my own patterns to go with the classes. Although I wasn’t sure I could do it, I decided to give it a go, and discovered that I really enjoyed the challenge of communicating clearly in this format. A Useful Pot to Keep Things In, is an example of an early design I wrote to support my teaching.

What inspires your designs?
I design mostly for myself – as well as for my imaginary student. I like to learn new things and I have a goofy sense of humor. In fact, I’ll often come up with a silly word or phrase first, as with my Wedgie Blanket, and then play with ideas that fit the name.

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
I like texture, geometry, and simplicity. Specifically, I like patterns that look harder than they are, and I’m drawn to tailored forms that appeal to knitters just discovering crochet.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
I really love quick, one-skein projects – primarily pieces using fingering-weight yarn, which I find can soften crochet’s structured look and feel. I also love using up leftovers from previous projects, so many of my designs incorporate small amounts of scrap yarn.

What’s your “comfort crochet?”
A better question would be, “What’s your ‘comfort crafting’?” And that would be socks. There’s nothing better than making and wearing handknit socks. In fact, I must have about 30 pairs in my sock drawer right now!

One of the best things about knitting so many socks? I end up with lots of leftovers for my long-term Bandwagon Blanket project.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
The Jenny June Scarf, adapted from a thread crochet bedspread motif in a book from the 1880s located via www.antiquepatternlibrary.org, is perhaps my least-appreciated design to date.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to knit/crochet?
Howlcat by Alex Tinsley; Vinter Votter by Anniken Allis; and Soft as Butter by Sarah Jane Designs.

What’s the best thing about knitting/crocheting?
For me, the best things about knitting and crochet have been the people I’ve met and the chance to learn new things.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other crafters?
New crafters should strive to be fearless learners. It’s really hard to learn new skills, and as adult learners we often fall into “all or nothing” thinking: If I can’t learn something immediately, that means that I’m no good at it and that I’ll never be good at it.

Not true.

Learning is hard work, and it’s a process. Be gentle and patient with yourself, and remember that all the mistakes you make now will turn you into a better crafter down the road!

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View all of Beth’s patterns here. All photos, unless otherwise noted, are copyright Beth Graham and used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

The number of crochet designers participating in Gift-A-Long this year has grown. For a listing of all crochet designers, please click here.

Today’s Gift-A-Long interview is with Anne Blayney of AnnieBee Knits. Anne is another local designer and friend and we were all amazed by her stunning early design – the Chawton Mittens. Being published by Interweave for one of your first designs is quite an accomplishment!

How did you get started designing?
My first substantial design was the Chawton Mittens that were published in Interweave’s inaugural issue of Jane Austen Knits back in 2011. (I just recently re-released them with updated notes and under my own branding.) Quite honestly, I submitted the design on a whim — with the encouragement of my local knitting group, but never really thinking that it would be accepted. I saw the call for submissions and the idea for the mittens sprang to mind quite fully formed. The technical details of quite how to realize that idea took longer, of course, but I was incredibly lucky to have such a start! Having the professional team behind the magazine showing me the way certainly set the standard high for my own independent designs — now I wouldn’t dream of releasing a pattern without a tech editor’s help, for instance.

What inspires your designs?
I tend to be inspired by techniques, or ways of resolving a certain issue. In the Chawton Mittens, it was about how to bend the cables around the cameo, and how to handle the long floats in the cameo. In my newest shawl pattern, Brightness and Contrast, it was about how to deal with really wildly coloured handpainted yarns — those yarns that are so exquisite in the skein, but so chaotic (and often muddy) when knit up. In one of my earliest designs, the Umami Cowl, it was about playing with different yarn bases in the same colourway, one superwash and one feltable, to experiment with the texture. In a new design I’m working on, for a pair of mittens, it’s a new construction, working in an entirely different direction than most mittens! The focus on techniques and problem-solving means that my designs may have very different styles from one piece to the next, but it also means that I’m never bored — and neither is my tech editor!

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
Sometimes the yarn IS the inspiration, as with Brightness and Contrast or the Umami Cowl. Other times, it’s definitely a case of having a design in mind and seeking out the yarn that will best realize the vision. (Yarn inspires me in general — it makes me want to knit! — but it doesn’t always insist on a certain design.)

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
Is it a cliche to say that I only design things that I’d be happy to wear? I want my patterns to be approachable and clear, and my designs to be pieces that make the wearer feel warm and beautiful (or handsome, I suppose).

What is your favourite type of item to design?
I’m most comfortable with accessories — because that’s what I knit most for myself! I love shawlettes and probably have enough to wear a different one every day for three weeks, or much longer if I reclaimed ones that I’ve knit as gifts. I love the flexibility of accessories, and the ability to reinvent basic wardrobe staples with a splash of colour and special yarn!

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
Oh goodness, I can’t possibly choose. It would almost certainly be fingering weight, wool (maybe with silk or cashmere) with no nylon content — I love to make everything from sweaters to shawls to gloves to blankets in fine yarn like that. But asking me to pick one dyer would be like asking a painter to pick only one tube of paint!

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
I’ve been knitting squares for a mitered-square blanket for myself for several years now. Well, truth be told, I knitted squares for one, then my sister got engaged and I ended up giving her the blanket as a wedding present. I started another one for myself immediately! I knit the squares separately, so they’re modular and portable, and I can rearrange the colours as I add new yarns. I’ve finally hit 170 of these 4″ fingering-weight squares for the new blanket, so now I just (just!) need to weave in the ends and seam it up, then add a border. Not having my little bag of squares with me at all times is making me twitchy, though; I need to find another portable project so I always have something easy to grab! I know you, too, are very familiar with the allure of the mitered square…

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
Probably the Umami Cowl — though I can understand why its appeal has limits. The yarn company (Waterloo Wools) has closed, and it’s not always easy to find coordinating yarns in superwash and non-superwash versions, particularly in heavier yarns. I think I may work up a fingering-weight version, because lots of dyers offer superwash sock yarn and non-superwash shawl yarn. Then again, there are always new things to knit, so my older designs languish without as much attention as I might intend to give them!

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
I’ve already made a little Anticipation sweater for a friend’s baby, due next month. I’ve also cast on an Airstream hat to coordinate with it. (Shhh!) I’ve also nearly finished a Cross Stitch Cowl, for myself.

Continental or English?
English. I’ve never learned Continental, much to my chagrin!

What’s the best thing about knitting?
I call it ‘productive fidgeting.’ I’m really not that good at sitting still, without something to occupy my hands.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
No matter how complicated the design, the thing about knitting is it’s always just one stitch at a time. Breathe deeply, and make that next stitch.

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
My local knit group is coordinating a Stashdown event for 2015, so you can bet that knitting from stash is on my list! (I may be guilty of wanting to buy ALL THE YARN now so that I can count it as stash come January…)

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View all of Anne’s patterns here. All photos, unless otherwise noted, are copyright Anne Blayney. All images used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s interview is with Mindy Dykman of RavenKnits. Mindy is another designer local to me but we only ‘met’ through the Gift-A-Long.

How did you get started designing?
I really started designing when my sons were little and I could find very few fun but boy-friendly knits to make for them. I messed around with converting patterns and used a sweater formula to create garments for them. This was years before I signed up for Ravelry, of course, so those designs never got further than the single prototype garment I put on my kid. On Ravelry I discovered lace shawls and indie dyers, and it was my desire to find a pattern suitable for strongly contrasting variegated yarns that spurred me to create my first ‘real’ design, Rosa Acicularis.

What inspires your designs?
I draw inspirations from three main sources; the yarn itself, the shape of natural elements primarily plants, and the ‘what if’ questions I have about basic knitting structure.

Rosa, as I mentioned, was inspired specifically for the yarn from which I knit my prototype – a glorious skein of Iachos yarn in the Styx colourway. I started designing at the same time that Kate Bachus of A Hundred Ravens Yarns started dying, and we’ve had a mutually supportive relationship as yarnie and designer since then, which has been lovely.

Most of my patterns have incorporated plant shapes and carry the latin names of the plants that inspired them. This makes my pattern library challenging to pronounce but also clearly indicative of the inspiration for the shawls.

Finally in the past year I’ve been playing a bit with the classic profiles of various shawl and stole shapes, and how to achieve them a bit more unconventionally. Wings of Change from the Spirit Wings eBook is a good example of this – it is a stole shape that starts as a classictab-construction top-down triangle. I had a lot of fun designing that one, and holding my breath when I got it to the blocking boards and finding out if what worked in my head would actually work in yarn, too.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
A bit of both, although lately it’s been the inspiration that comes first, followed by me hunting through my stash to find something suitable. I have been trying to knit from stash first this year, although we all know how well that usually goes.

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
I really enjoy combining a textural element with lace stitches, and then seeing how many different shapes can grow from one or two thematic stitch patterns. So I have a collection of designs themed around waterlilies that use large leaf motifs and an expanded garter rib, and I have an eBook themed around mythological birds using Estonian star stitches and feather motifs. I like grouping things that are similar, but use different weights of yarns and different constructions.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
I’ve been fixated on lace shawls pretty much from day one. Sometimes I feel like I should be fleshing out the collection with some small accessory pieces (hats, cowls, fingerless mitts, that sort of thing) but I never quite get around to starting.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
Fleece Artist Trail Socks, without a doubt. It is the only yarn I’ve worked with that I cannot bear to part with even a few inches of remnant scrap.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
It sounds a bit mad, but colourwork. The first designs I knit for my little boys were fantastic intarsia dragons and fair-isle inspired sweaters. More recently I’ve taken to double knitting like a crazy woman, and am playing with the idea of double knitting an afghan in 2015.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
Taking into account the length of time a pattern has been released, I would say the Nuphar Fichu is my most under-appreciated design. That’s a little bit odd, because its closest sister, the Nuphar Shawlette, is my most popular design. The fichu pulls in the same elements as the fingering weight shawlette, but is designed to use dk yarn and be just a lovely little confection to keep your shoulders warm, or to tuck into an open coat collar.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
A lot of my GAL casting on has been looking for suitable patterns for other people, but for me ‘personally’ I’ve got Alex Tinsley’s Howlcat on the needles, and have Rachel Henry’s Hornburg Cowl and Laura Aylor’s Spiced Cocoa mittens queued up. I have a new puppy and it’s cold these mornings when I need to be out supervising her in the yard – I want snuggly, warm accessories!

Continental or English?
English – I’m a pit knitter, so have learned to squish a remarkable number of stitches onto straight needles and use circulars only if I have no choice.

What’s the best thing about knitting?
The best thing for me is seeing how the yarn plays with different stitches to create its own story. I am always excited to see how a variegated yarn will flash and pool, or how the sheen of silk accents certain textures.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Frog fearlessly. We have a great luxury in our craft that if something is not working, we can pull the whole thing out and approach it from a different angle. Knitting allows us to experiment without repercussion, so knit boldly and frog fearlessly!

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
My goal for this year is to choose my yarns more mindfully, and work on a ‘look’ for my shop that is distinct and professional.

It’s been a great experience in this GAL to meet and pay attention to what other designers do with their brand, as well as with the patterns themselves, and it’s made me realize the importance of a cohesive style. My styling has been, well, amateur and chaotic, and I want to address that this year while I still have a relatively small library to revamp.

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View all of Mindy’s patterns here. All images copyright Mindy Dykman (unless noted otherwise) and are used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s Gift-A-Long interview is with Selina S of Knotty Turtles. Selina is a the first of my local designer friends that I’m interviewing for the GAL (more than half the Ontario, Canada designers live in our area, something must be in the water!). Her design esthetic is quite unique – and nothing can quite compare to seeing a large gathering of her slugs (what is the collective noun for slugs?)

How did you get started designing?
I don’t remember when or why I started doing my own thing, but I wrote down my first pattern when a local dyer in my knit group ask for patterns to go with her yarns. I had just knit a hat to a friend’s specifications and thought the design would look good in a variegated yarn.

What inspires your designs?
Sometimes it is because someone ask me for something, like when my partner wanted a brain slug. Sometimes its because there’s a problem to solve. For example, I was wondering if it was possible to knit fingerless gloves with only 2 ends and ended up with my Platypus gloves.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
Definitely the inspiration!

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
As few ends and seams as possible! Maybe a bit of silliness now and then? I do try and make sure a few of the final photos have some ferrets in it. Does that count?

What is your favourite type of item to design?
I haven’t really designed enough to have a favourite. Toys are instant gratification, I don’t have enough sweaters, and my hands are always cold. Those are probably my priority right now.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
May I take my spinning wheel and a supply of qiviut? Handmaiden 4 ply cashmere if I can’t.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
It might be hard to believe, but slugs and blowfishes. I know the patterns well enough to knit them during staff meetings. I have 2 nieces that I’m not allowed to buy things for, so they get a few octoslugs and blowfishes in different colours every year. They are good presents for kids and the slugs are taking over my dryer. If I don’t have anything to knit, I pull out some yarn scraps and knit slugs.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
Tiriaq fingerlings. It may just remain lost in a sea of cable glove patterns! I made a number of these before someone asked me to write it down. The ribbing makes it a really flexible fit, and lots of sizing options on top of that.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
1. The Minimissimi Sweater Coat. I’ve wanted to knit that forever. I was planning to start it but discovered none of my stash yarn will work.
2. Saltire kept catching my eye. I haven’t done any 2 colour crochet shawls, so it is very intriguing.
3. Mostly likely what I’ll end up doing is a splat cat, because it is hard to argue against instant gratification. Plus they crack me up.

Continental or English?
I knit English when I don’t want to look, but I learned continental so I could do ribbing faster. All continental if I’m doing double knitting or stranded.

What’s the best thing about knitting?
Something soft, squishy, and unique made with sweat and tears!

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Try new techniques on toys knitted with wool. Go ahead and make a tons of mistake and watch them all disappear when you felt them in the washer!

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
Spin more. Knit more handspun. Write down some patterns. Document my yarn and fibre stash on Rav.

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View all of Selina’s patterns here. Photography by Kristina Sinzig. All images used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!

Today’s Gift-A-Long interview is with Gabrielle Vézina, fellow Canadian designer from Montréal.

How did you get started designing?
When I was a kid, my mom was a fashion design teacher. We were living in a rather small apartment where she had to sleep in the living room but she had a sewing and knitting room. In this lovely environment, where I had access to every tool and knowledge I needed, I started sewing and crocheting at 6, designing clothes and accessories when I was a teen, but I really started knitting my whole wardrobe when I quit smoking in 2009 and got to keep my hands busy. In 2012, I realized my dream job would be to design knitting patterns and that’s when I really started being serious about that.

What inspires your designs?
I take my inspiration everywhere! I love nature and a lot of my designs have flowers, leaves or animal patterns. I also like designing youthful and everyday wearable pieces so I get inspired by people I see in the streets. In my nordic city, I enjoy taking the subway and carefully study interesting scarves and hats people are wearing.

Which comes first – the yarn or the inspiration?
I often imagine a pattern first and then go stashbusting. If I can’t find what I need in my stash I try to find the perfect yarn at my LYS and I usually come back with more yarn and even more ideas…

What characteristics do you try to incorporate in your designs?
Simplicity is my motto. I like when my patterns are easy to understand and to wear. I try to use most techniques at a beginner level so knitters can enjoy working through the pattern in a stress-free way. My biggest hope is that people will really wear their creations based on my patterns so I tend to create sober yet actual designs.

What is your favourite type of item to design?
I’m very proud when I get to design a cardigan. It’s a lot of work but it’s worth it. I feel like I accomplish something big when the pattern is released. I also love wearing cardigans every single day so they never end up in the corner of a closet.

Your desert island yarn? (if you could only knit with one yarn from now on which would it be?)
It depends if it’s a northern or southern island! For a southern island, I would go with Handmaiden Mini Maiden which is a light blend of wool and silk. For a northern island, I’d choose SWTC Llama Lluxury which is 100% Baby Llama, the softest yarn on earth, never pilling and holding its shape well even after years of frequent wearing.

What’s your “comfort knitting?”
I knit most of my scarves and shawls in my PJs while watching movies so I guess it makes it comfort knitting! Shawls and scarves are easy, fun to knit and there are endless possible variations.

Which is your most under-appreciated design?
Without hesitation, the Doncaster Stole. It’s one of my favorite design but it’s also my less favorited neckwear on Ravelry. I like its combination of lace patterns – eyelets, flower and leaves. The construction is different from most scarves because it starts with a provisional cast-on and the lace sections are worked from the middle to both ends. Because of that, the stole is symmetrical. It’s not complicated and I really like the result, I wear it very often.

Which three GAL designs are top of your list to cast on?
1. I love love love the Tiptoe Slippers by Hanna Tjukanov
2. The Lucent hat by Hunter Hammersen has lovely details that gives it a very unconventional look
3. My teeth are hurting because this baby coat is too sweet! Red Riding Coat by Lisa Chemery

Continental or English?
I learned the English way at first but switched to Continental because it seems to be more ergonomic. I convinced my mother to switch to Continental even if she had been knitting the English way for over 40 years! We would not switch back!

What’s the best thing about knitting?
I’m still fascinated by the fact that a simple strand can take an infinity of shapes. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s like magic to me, one day it’s a skein, the next day it’s a hat! This is very concrete, in opposition to everything that is virtual in the world we live in.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d like to share with other knitters?
Never let a cat near a basket full of balls of yarn…!

Any knitting/designing New Year’s resolutions?
I have a yearly subscription to the famous resolution “buy less yarn and to use more from the stash”. I’m not really good at it. This year, I have also resolved to translate all my patterns from English to French. I’m quite ashamed that not all my patterns are available in my first language.

View all of Gabrielle’s patterns here. Photo credit for Doncaster Stole and Syvania Cardigan: Robert Tétreault. All remaining photos: Gabrielle Vézina. All images used by permission.

What is the Gift-A-Long? The GAL is a big knitting and crochet designer promotion with prizes and more than 5,000 people participating in a giant KAL/CAL. Come join the GAL group on Ravelry!