I am so happy to feature Michelle aka Knit Draper on Knit’s All Folks! today. I get to meet so many interesting and super SMART people with this monthly column, and Michelle is no exception. She’s a software architect by day and a knitwear designer by night. I am continually honored and impressed by the stories knitters share with me about how knitting and craft have helped them through a difficult time in their life and I’m so grateful for Michelle’s story. Please enjoy her interview and get to know her a little better, check out her designs, and find out when to “save my mistakes.”
What inspired you to start knitting or crocheting?
My grandmother taught me how to knit as a child. Over the years, knitting was an on and off thing, never serious. In 2012, I started knitting on the commuter bus and I learned to follow a pattern so designing became easier. As a full-time software architect, knitwear design grew from my architecture and process background.
Has knitting or crocheting got you through a difficult time in your life? If so, how did it help?
After 9-11, I started having anxiety attacks on my drive to work to the Pentagon. I stopped driving and started taking the train but the anxiety attacks carried over. I started carrying my prayer mala. The repetition and focus on each bead helped calm my mind. Knitting has the same repetition and focus on the needle carrying the yarn.
What keeps you obsessed?
Knitting has levels to it. Always something to learn and master. You have a selection of stitches, working with different fiber types, weights, colorwork, and lace. It’s just so much to learn. No matter if you follow a pattern or design your own pattern it’s an act of creating. In 2012, I become a hand dyed yarn snob. Designer Joji Locatelli and my dear friend Rosalind taught me so much about yarn. Joji has impeccable taste in yarn and has no clue about her role in my learning. Rosalind schooled me in dye lots, local yarn shops and all the online sales. [Joji is AMAZING. I can say without reservation, I LOVE HER PATTERNS! Just beautiful! I would love to interview her and she is a designer hero of mine as well!] Other things about the knitting community I’m obsessed with: Ravelry and Instagram. Finding others who curate their work and share their lives. I know there’s not a person on Ravelry that has not lost hours to looking at patterns and yarn.
What’s your favorite project that you’re working on right now?
I have four current projects and they are all equally exciting. They are new designs, I’m creating. The first design is in bulky weight [yarn] that has an interesting texture. The second design is fingering weight [yarn] that’s two colors and based on a character from a 1970’s sitcom. The third design is in Findley DK [yarn and] a mosaic complex color work. The fourth is a textured and worsted superwash yarn purchased from JoAnn’s Fabric; it’s a work shawl that will be sat on. [I love the diversity of the projects she’s working on!]
What project are you most proud of? Why?
All my original designs are my proudest projects. I’m a new knitwear designer and it was inspiring to start a project and carry it off without a finished documented pattern. The process to get the written part right was more of an effort than I thought.
What’s the best knitting or crochet advice you have received?
Swatch and save my mistakes. I don’t always swatch but do on complicated stitches or when I want to see how stitches will play together.
Follow Michelle on Instagram here.
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