MENU
Tinking Turtle Raverly Profile

Tinking Turtle

Four Pillars

Tinking Turtle Raverly

Week of Interviews – Alice Yu and Deuce

by

Alice Yu has an impressive knitting resume.  She is the owner of Socktopus, and creator of the popular Knit Love Yarn Club.  You my recognize her work by the popular pattern, Shur’tugal or by her book, published in 2011, Socktopus: 17 Pairs of Socks to Knit and Show Off.  Alice has kindly managed to carve out time in her schedule to answer some of my questions.

Alice, tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m an expat Canadian living in Hong Kong by way of London England.  I used to be a lawyer, then sort of fell into knitting, like falling down the rabbit hole. Ever since then my life has been an adventure in knitting, designing and dyeing yarns. 
Deuce has such a fascinating stitch pattern.  Loving working with stranded yarns and slipped stitches, I’m curious how you came up with the pattern.  Did you need to swatch for it very much?

I played around with slipped stitches with my design De Stijl, and thought that it had potential.  Deuce is a follow on from that design, using the same technique.  I played around with alot of different combinations but settled on one that was relatively easy to remember.  
How did you come up with the names for your pattern?
Names for patterns are often inspired by my life at the time of designing, or if the pattern reminds me of something (like Fiori di Zucca that reminded me of zucchini  flowers).
Why do you like to design socks?
I love socks because they are the ultimate portable project. A small microcosm where you can play with all manner of knitting techniques – short rows, slipped stitches, texture, cables, etc.  A great canvas but not overly involved – I have  short attention span so socks are the perfect thing for me.
Are there any things you are hoping to design in the future?
I would like to design some kid’s wear – having a little one has opened up a lot of possibilities and things I would like to see her in but can’t find.
Is there a favorite time of day you prefer to knit?
I love knitting in the afternoon – a nice calm time when I’m not too tired. 
If you were making your own trail mix, what would you put in it, and why?
My own trail mix would have: raisins, a nice 54% chocolate chip, roasted almonds, granola clusters, Brazil nuts (love those), dried cranberries, some cocao nibs, and roasted hazelnuts. 
Having said that, I do love Chex mix.
Thank you Alice for taking the time to stop and chat  with us today.  If you are interested in more about Alice, visit her website at http://www.socktopus.co.uk/blog/.
If you would like to track back to the other interviews they are as follows:

Second Day of Interviews – Kim Haesemeyer and Bowden Cable Socks

by

Kim Haesemeyer is the delightful designer of Bowden Cable Socks in Interweave’s most current issue of Sockupied.  Kim is a pretty prolific designer, and has a variety of her patterns available at her Ravelry page. She most graciously agreed to answer some questions for me about her socks, and what inspires her.  Without further ado, here is Kim:

How did you come up with the cable pattern?
Simple cables are some of my favorite stitch patterns to knit because with very little effort you have a wonderful new fabric. I wanted the cuff ribbing to naturally flow into the main cable pattern, so I just played with combinations until I found what I thought worked well. Plus, cabling is truly just another fancy ribbing since the pull-in of the stitches creates wonderful stretch to fit your foot nicely. This is also an ideal pattern to practice cabling without a cable needle.

How do you come up for names for your pattern?
Interweave chose the name for me and I love it! Classic with a bit of zing.

What is inspiring you right now?  Do you have pictures, patterns or motifs?
I always have fun finding a particular part of a garment like the silhouette or stitch pattern and wonder how I can rework it for my purposes. What makes this garment work? What do I like about it? Would that stitch pattern a fun body pattern? Or just a hint of excitement along a neck or cuff edge? Would that work for a hat or mitten? 

Why do you like to design socks?
Socks are a great way to try stitch patterns without having to commit to a huge garment. Plus, colors that may be too crazy for you to wear in other ways is the perfect amount of excitement in a pair of socks. Slightly zany socks absolutely brighten my day and even if the world cannot see them, I know they are there. If I am feeling more adventurous, I have seen the clear boots advertised in knitting magazines and thought they would be a fun way to showcase socks.

What do you hope to design in the future?
The exciting (and often overwhelming!) part of knitting design is how there are so many possibilities. I look forward to learning different sweaters and as well as other types of heels and toes in sock knitting.

What is your favorite item to knit?
I enjoy accessories because you can splurge on fancy yarn a bit if there isn’t too much yardage. I love to knit socks for the same reason — often just one hank makes the perfect pair and they travel well without taking up much space. Vests are my other favorite because they are so fast to knit seamlessly and they are the perfect layering piece to enjoy nearly year round.

Is there a favorite time of day you prefer to knit?
I like to process my day with my knitting so I have to knit at least for a bit in the evening. I have recently combined my two favorite things, knitting and reading, by listening to audio books. Why it took me so long to figure this out, I don’t know. Before I could only do one or the other, but now I can do both all day long!

Quick, your an animal!  What are you?  Why?
The ocean is my favorite and I always thought it would be amazing to explore the seas being a dolphin. Imagine how much they have seen that we know nothing about!

If you would like to learn more about Kim, visit her at her website,  bigskyyarnsandcrafts.com.
To read yesterday’s interview with Claire on my blog visit here.

A Week of Interviews Claire Ellen and Uloborus

by

Welcome to a week of interviews!  This week I have a special treat for you… I’ll be featuring interviews from various designers from the latest issue of Sockupied.

Today, Tuesday, we have an interview with Claire Ellen, who created the truly stunning Uloborus Socks.  Claire is currently in Hungary in Karcag, and writes very eloquently about her experiences abroad.  And without further ado, I’ll let Claire tell you about her Uloborus Socks, and the process they went through before they became what you see in Sockupied today.

One of the things I love most about designing socks– any socks, all socks, all the time!– is that each element of the knitting can have a different motif or idea. A sock has so many different planes and angles, and each one can host a different pattern or the same pattern or a combination of different ideas. I love that the foot can be different than the ankle; the gusset can host a pattern or be plain; etc. The possibilities are endless. 

I was an English major in school, and an English professor once I graduated, and I love finding connections in novels and poetry. When I began playing with yarn, it was a simple process to include literary connections– they’re the two things I love most. Sometimes the connections only make sense in my brain, but it’s as though I can see a knit pattern that embodies some theme or character from the literature. It began when I saw a yarn at The Swift Stitch (my LYS in Santa Cruz) that just screamed Gimli, from the Lord of the Rings. That began my designing whirlwind, and it just keeps getting better! I’d never have dreamed that this silly little hobby of mine combined with an obsession with literature would result in such a degree of fame and fortune. Ha! But seriously, this was all really unexpected. 

As far as the Uloborus socks go, well, they’re really a continuation of the Lord of the Rings series of socks that I thought I had finished. I don’t know if it makes any sense to anybody else, but the collections of patterns are broken into groups of characters I thought went well together– The Fellowship of the Nine was an obvious starting place. Then came what I think of as the “Other Heroes” then “The Ladies,” and finally, a small (but hopefully growing soon) collection from The Hobbit. People were pressuring me to do a “Villains” group, but I’d had enough. I just don’t like the villains. Because, you know, they’re villains. Besides, I thought, how much black yarn can a person knit with? Anyway, I’d thought the collection was finished, and I wanted to knit other things. 

But Shelob (Tolkien’s big spider monster) got under my skin. Scary thought, that! I’d seen several spider-themed socks on Ravelry, and they’re beautiful! But none of them really captured the creepy-ick factor of Shelob in my mind. So I started swatching. And reswatching, and playing around with cables, then with lace, and then bam. It just happened. I was looking through a stitch dictionary, and there it was. Perfect! Just the right amount of Creepy-ick, with some beauty and some delicacy thrown in for good measure. The pattern needed a bit of fiddling, and I needed some additional stitches to fill out the sock, but I just knew this was it. 

Sockupied contacted me the day that I finally got the ankle swatch to work the way I wanted it. They were looking for submissions with a short deadline; I was playing with a stitch pattern, but also planning a move from California to Budapest! It’s a good thing these socks practically knit themselves, and the staff of Sockupied were so helpful, or they’d never have gotten finished up. As for the name, someone at Sockupied came up with “Uloborus” which is a super icky tropical spider of some sort. Good, eh? 

Working on these socks has left me wondering if I might not just return to Tolkien as a source of inspiration and do some villain socks after all. The Mouth of Sauron has a certain horrible charm to him that might translate well to a sock. Right now, though, I’m working like crazy trying to adapt to a new country, new language, sparsity of sock yarn, and a whole host of other issues. I’ve also got Shakespeare on the brain of late, and several socks published, in process, and being tested that borrow from the “Sweet Swan of Avon” for inspiration. 

I began designing socks on a lark. It was something to do with my evenings while my family watched basketball finals or CSI reruns. How could I have guessed that I’d love it the way I do. I’d rather knit socks than just about anything else. I’d do it whether anybody else ever knit my designs or not, and I’ll keep on doing it till it’s not fun anymore. 

Inspiration for Totem

by

I am a liberal arts major, and was a straight A student throughout high school.  This was  not because I love to get good grades, but rather because I love to learn (grades were just a bonus).  I like knowing about things I had no knowledge of.

Totem has the genesis in several different ideas.  I was on the train home from one of Michael’s and my many journeys , and I had just finished Totoro, a slipped stitch pattern idea I had been playing with.  I was proud of the design, but I knew that this slipped stitch technique could be pushed father; that I could do more with it.

So I started noodling around with the leftover yarn I had from Totoro.  Because it was a highly varigated yarn, I knew I wanted a design that did a good job breaking up pooling.  The first idea wasn’t quite right, so I pulled out some more yarn and made this first swatch.

Okay, that pattern was pretty cool.  And the slipped stitches looked pretty neat.  But I didn’t think it was enough.  Was this really that different from what I did in Totoro?  I’d already done slipped stitches once, and a new pattern had to be interesting enough not only for me to knit the swatch, but different enough to be accepted as a unique pattern submission.  What else could I do?


I thought maybe I could add a cable, but I get frustrated when cables vanish in highly varigated yarns, and I wanted this to work with yarns like the one I was using.  I’d just finished reading through The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt, and I remembered that she had used another type of slipped stitch – a wrapped stitch.  Wrapped stitches would be perfect – not only would the necklace around the stitches stand out because of the yarn’s highly varigated nature, it would break up any pooling that could occur.  Sweet.

So I swatched some more, and I thought the pattern was doing well – but it was getting awfully repetitive.  Was there any way I could break it up periodically with something else?  I went back to my pinterest board to look at stitch patterns I had favorited – nothing.  So I went on Ravelry hoping that if I gave my brain a break something would pop up.

I came across a post that thesexyknitter (otherwise known as Sarah Wilson) on raverly posted about her pattern, Jon’s Sweater.  It uses slipped stitches and the lateral braid to create a wonderfully subtle texture.  I’d never heard of the lateral braid, but it looked so cool.

How hard could it be?

So I learned how to do it, using this video.

And then I added it to the pattern.

So now I had the pattern that you see here.  It has the lateral braid, the slipped stitches, the wrapped stitches, and it’s the picture that I sent to Sockupied for my proposal.

What do you think? Have you ever done a lateral braid?  How about wrapped stitches?

Totem

by

The official description: To work with the color shifts of handpainted yarn, Totem uses a type of slipped stitch in a geometric pattern that resembles the monumental cedar sculptures. A lateral braid creates the illusion of knit stitches rotated 90°.

Published in: Sockupied, Spring 2013
Craft: Knitting
Category: Feet / Legs → Socks → Mid-calf
Published: January 2013
Yarns suggested: Three Irish Girls Adorn Sock
Yarn weight: Fingering / 4 ply (14 wpi)
Gauge: 39 stitches and 52 rows = 4 inches
Needle size: US 1½ – 2.5 mm
Yardage: 430 – 600 yards (393 – 549 m)
Sizes available: 5 3/4, 7 1/2, 8 3/4″ circumference and 8 1/2, 10 1/4, 11 3/4″ long
This pattern is available for download for $7.99.

Ravelry Link

FINISHED SIZE 5¾ (7½, 8¾)” (14.5 19, 22 cm) foot circumference and 8½ (10¼, 11¾)” (21.5 26, 30 cm) long from back of heel to tip of toe; to fit women’s U.S. shoe size 6½ (8½, 10½). Socks shown measure 7½” (19 cm).

Notes: To accommodate a deep heel or high instep, you may choose to add additional stitches before the heel in the mini-gusset section, then decrease them in the purl column in the beginning of the leg.

If your foot circumference is larger (or smaller) than your ankle circumference, you may cast on more (or fewer) stitches in the foot section and decrease (or increase) as needed in the columns of knit stitches that divide the front and back of the sock.

Debating if the pattern is right for you?  Got questions?  This is the place to ask them!

Totem is Out!

by

About 15 minutes ago I was taking a break from working on writing a pattern for Sockupied that will be coming out in the Fall.

I was scrolling through my Google Feed reader when I came across this post on Knitting Daily.  I’m going through the article when I notice the socks – and my first thought is, huh.  I made a pair of socks in that colorway (by Three Irish Girls).  Then I go… oh wait… that IS my pattern!

Totem, I’m happy to announce, is out.  You can buy it on the Interweave website, and it’s a true steal.  And it’s on the cover of Sockupied! (They’re the red ones, seen to the right.)

In the upcoming days I’ll be talking a little bit about the inspiration for Totem, early iterations, the design process for this sock, and a variety of other things!

Have you looked at the new Sockupied yet?  Anything you see in the magazine that you’d like to work up?

Latest Posts

Social Feed

Tinking Turtle Ravelry

Email Signup

Don’t miss a stitch!

Be the first to learn about classes, patterns. upcoming events and more.