I have noticed that there are certain people who like rage bait on purpose these days in order to get an audience with their knitting. You know, I used to like to do one of these things in a harmless way, like say, like my favorite yarn is really cheap, which it is, but that would always get like people riled up, and so I can recognize it when I see it. And there's someone, I won't say any names, because that's too much, but who consistently says this one piece of advice that's actually really great advice packaged in a negative statement, so you can't tell what it is, and it like rage baits everyone into this argument. And multiple times Reddit has gone crazy over her answers. It's marketing. Three designers that I know publish the exact same stitch pattern with the exact same shaping, and it's driving me crazy because you guys need to like do something else. Like, why are you all selling if you're all getting to the same place?
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome to Yarn Library with me, Adam Cleavely, the podcast where I talk to fascinating people in the fiber world about knitting, creativity, community, and the stories behind the stitches. Pick up your needles, pour a cup of tea, settle in, and welcome to the Yarn Library. Hello and welcome to the Yarn Library Podcast with me, Adam Cleveley. And today I have a very special guest. Today's guest is one of, I think, the most fascinating people in knitting. Not just because he's designed many, many beautiful things, and not just because he travels far and wide teaching innovative techniques. I invited Zandy here today because whenever I talk to him, I come away with a completely different perspective on the knitting world. And I wanted to share that experience with you. For more than 15 years, Zandy's been challenging assumptions, questioning conventions, and building a reputation as a designer and artist in the fiber world. Today I wanted to dive into some of the big questions in knitting originality, creativity, success, identity, innovation, and where our craft might be heading. And I understand that's a tall order for a podcast, but we'll see how we get on. Welcome to the podcast, Sandy.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I have to say, last week or two weeks ago when Adam emailed me and said, Do you want to have a plan or do you want to just talk about whatever direction we go in? I wasn't thinking that it was going to be such a deep philosophical conversation that I had to prepare for.
SPEAKER_01Well, we can just keep it really light. We'll see where it goes. But yeah. I think when I first talked to you about coming on the podcast, Zandy, you said to me something like, like, I can I can be as controversial as you want. Like you can ask me anything. We can go as controversial and deep as you want. So, you know, I'll give you your word.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I can be, but also I've noticed that a lot of people do that if you want to already get into something controversial. I have noticed that there are certain people who like rage bait on purpose these days in order to get an audience with their knitting. And I feel like that was something that, you know, I used to like to do on these things in a harmless way, like say, like my favorite yarn is like really cheap, which it is. Most of the stuff that I'm working on is in this really cheap yarn, but that would always get like people riled up, and so I can recognize it when I see it. And there's someone, I won't say any names, because that's too much, but like who consistently says this one piece of advice that's actually really great advice packaged in a negative statement, so you can't tell what it is, and it like rage baits everyone into this argument. And multiple times Reddit has gone crazy over her um answers, it's marketing and it it drives me insane because people can't see it.
SPEAKER_01That it's it is I mean, it's that's a really challenging thing about social media, isn't it? And it's I mean, it's something I struggle with as well because I like a lot of the times that when I have reels that are really successful on like simple tutorials, the way that you get that reel to go viral is often by telling like this is wrong or you're doing this wrong or something like that, which is also which is also like something I really hate doing in knitting because there isn't a wrong.
SPEAKER_00Okay. This is something I've told people, and you definitely fall into the category of people who might have seen this. This is not knitting related, but I think that anyone who's watching your podcast or listening who engages with social media might find this interesting. Where I actually am coached by Instagram as an app to always phrase things as a negative. They tell you, it says in the app, and like this must be a marketing thing to use like a hook to get people to like engage with something, and they say always use a negative hook. And it's because it rage baits people. And so when it comes to crafts, it's actually so if you've noticed that sometimes I'll say something in a weirdly negative way that's really harmless, it's because Instagram's making me do that. They're like, if you don't say this, like say this in a and I try to make it harmless rage bait. Like I've noticed, I think we might have even had this conversation before, that you don't disparage people or discourage people. I very much try to see. Yeah, it's like not like like they're comedians who like are insult comedians, right? That's their job. Like, you're not that, I'm not that, right? So we don't insult people, we don't try to make people angry. So the app is telling you you need to make people a little angrier.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, because it because it creates yeah, because it's it it stirs up more. Before I get too deep and too philosophical on this, I want to make sure that I cover a little bit of your knitting background and experience for anyone that hasn't come across you, Zandy. And I want to I want to make sure people understand more of more of your background to knitting. So I I think what you're best known for is probably stacked stitches. Is that would would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_00I'm looking over to grab it. I know that not everyone can see, but I might as well show this project on the screen because if people have seen it, they'll recognize it. It's this foxpaws pattern is what I say got me all of these jobs because it's the it's the pattern that's even when I'm not teaching those stack stitches or referring to that technique when I'm working at a job, I'm there because those stitches allowed me to get those teaching jobs in the first place. So it's a super interesting technique to work with because it's kind of unusual and new in a lot of ways. It does a lot of things that other things in knitting can't do, but it's extremely similar to other techniques and like other crafts. So it's both old and new seeming.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I I I when I came across stack stitches, I it was probably fairly early in my knitting journey actually, because I I I discovered that thread on Reddit where someone talks about poison oak, the poison oak pattern being like the hardest, hardest knitting pattern there is, which which for me was rage basis. Like that's that's something I want to go and knit at some point. And then last last summer I think I did knit it. And I wanted to ask ask you about that, but but it's to in terms of describing stacked stitches, if anyone's just listening to it, it creates this very much more you can get all sorts of interesting organic shapes to it and all sorts of interesting ways of of the stitches seeming to flow, and it almost looks like it's crocheted in some ways because because it because it's it's so much more I don't know that the lines are just so much more uh contoured, I guess, than you can have in in regular knitting.
SPEAKER_00So the way that I describe it to people is if you've ever worked a chevron pattern or a feather and fan pattern, you know that increases create a mountain and decreases create a valley. And if you like it's any lace pattern that has that, or any pattern, I guess in general that has that. But if that's something that interests you and you want to look more into that, I love do you know stitch maps by JC Breyer where it shows the flow of the fabric? You put in your stitches and it shows how the rows bend. So increases and decreases will bend a row and they contour it. So when you're working with stacked stitches, a stacked increase or decrease is just a bunch of increases or decreases stacked up on top of each other. So they create a bigger wave. It's a more extreme wave. It's more like a finger on a paw than um like a wave, like a chevron or a feather and fan. But it's the same concept there where the increases obviously create a mountain and the decreases create a valley, it's just more extreme. Um, but they do so much more than the color work that people have seen like things that I have not, I just don't have time to do examples of everything, but things that I've just gotten around to, like 10 years after the fact, knowing it can do that, but just what did I just do recently? Something weird with it. Oh, a hat that had three-dimensional horns, right? I hadn't played around with three dimensions with because if you can do a big increase or a big decrease, you can make shapes in three 3D space, right? So I hadn't played around with that, but you know, it can create anything that short rows can do. The pants behind me have some short row shaping in the stacks or short row like shaping in the stacks, and it can do color work, obviously, because it does these striped motifs, but you can also use it for three-dimensional stuff that you couldn't create otherwise. So there's a designer who used the stack stitches, her name is Olia Amimono, and she used them to turn the heel of socks, right? Because you can get three-dimensional shapes out of them and do some interesting stuff, and of course, it's an increase or a decrease, so you can do shaping with them.
SPEAKER_01Like just that's really cool. I when when I first so when I when I tried to use stacked stitches to start with, I I used a a little wave pattern, a quite a simple stacked stitch. But I the first time I did it on the return row, I was my count was out by one. And what was amazing there was then just by having the the count out by one, rather than laying flat, the whole thing created these tall pinnacle spirals instead, which was amazing to me. And I was like, that's like you say, it's one of those things like that's really interesting. I'd love to know more about that at some point, but then how much time do you have and how to knit? It's difficult.
SPEAKER_00So the stack stitches are also interesting because they show you some things about other techniques where the mistakes are benign. So if you're working lace and you're one stitch off, it might become a little bit three-dimensional. But if you're working stack stitches and you're one stitch off, it can get very three-dimensional quickly, not just like something that you need to block out, like something that cannot lay flat. You can see me looking around the office to like I can see the things with three-dimensional stack stitches around me. But basically, this is something I was working on. I I have been working on replicating. This is so stupid. I've been for years, I've been working on just for my own personal little puzzle. I've been working on replicating that music video by the Arctic Monkeys, where it has the waves. I've been knitting that wave, and like whenever I get time, I just work on it a little bit, and then I get to this point where I've spent so much, like a ridiculous amount of shaping doing it, that it's not a pattern that I'd ever give to people. But you can see in this, the dark is an increased row, two rows, two ridges, I guess, of yellow on the back. It's got no floats. So you can see the yellow traveling. Um, and it's just this wavy line. But if you put these opposite each other, instead of fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle, they're going to come together like tectonic plates, like they make a mountain. And so it's not like a little tectonic plate. It's not like, I don't know where they're little tectonic plates, like the Rocky Mountains, it's like the Himalayas. It's a very it's like their magnitudes of like imagine an increase from one to 61 stitches.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean that's that's the amazing, that's the amazing thing about it, is you do take one stitch and you're you you're creating tens or you know, tens and tens of stitches out of a out of that one stitch. And so if you if you then are not decreasing that in the right place, that's why you end up with with these complex geometries.
SPEAKER_00And it, I mean, I this is getting completely off of controversial stuff. This is just really kind of math nerdy stuff where like let's let's like you know get cancelled on the show, and then we just send them math notes. But when I'm going through stuff with my editor, there are multiple checks that we do. There's the count going into the row, and then there are these extreme, like when I say extreme, a repeat might shift in the fox pause pattern from 20 stitches to 28 stitches in the course of a row. So that's you know, however many times across the project you're doing. Like you can do whatever you want, it's a rectangle. And then the next time you do an increase, it goes from 28 stitches per repeat to 50. So you get this kind of exponential growth. And so that's so much more extreme than if you have a pattern where it increases two stitches. Um, it's gonna be that much lumpier. So that's why it kind of makes those those mountains. But they're obviously that's why I tell my students there's nothing wrong when you make a mistake. It's just not in the right place.
SPEAKER_01This episode of Yarn Library is sponsored by me, Adam Clevely. Well, by Make a Getaway Retreats, which I also run and co-host. They're three or four-night retreats where knitters and crochets spend proper time together, learning, relaxing, focusing on their craft. We're in Cambridge this September and Edinburgh during the Christmas markets at the end of November. There are classes, plenty of time to yourself, and a really lovely group of crafters coming from all over the world. I really hope you'll come and join me. If you're interested in these retreats or any others we run, sign up at makeagetaway.com. Limited places remaining.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and not to bring this into it, but the pasties competition from Munich Nitz. One of the reasons I think that we had so much fun with that was that we were given a space that was so small to work with, like to come up with something interesting in a small time and a small space where it's really limited, everyone did little interesting things because no one was ever going to like actually wear these things. Like they weren't for anyone, they were just for fun. And so people could kind of go crazy.
SPEAKER_01It was a purely creative exercise, but just to recap for anyone that doesn't this doesn't necessarily follow that. So Zandy and I met with a bunch of other people in Munich Nitz back in November, I think it was November 25, and we one evening in the bar, in the hotel bar, we were just talking. We were I think it was your it was your mum, I think, is to blame for this. Is that fair, Sandy? It was Beth, wasn't it? Partially. I think she But we we we basically we we came up with the idea of of knitting nipple tassels during a talk that was being given by Kay Facet the the following evening. And yeah, it w it was a time-limited exercise because we had like I guess an hour, hour and a half to be able to knit these things. But then it was it was there was so much creativity expressed in that in those very small examples, small swatches.
SPEAKER_00And the people working on these, it was mostly the teachers at the event, so most people had kind of like a focus that they or an area of expertise. And by the way, Caife and Brandon say that next time that there's a competition, they are happy to join in, would have made us bring them, bring the tassels to the location near our venue for Munich Knits, the brothel. It's a brothel. There was a brothel near the convention center, and they were like, well, we should have just had them modeled. I don't think that went over though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think uh well I don't I don't have any words at this point. But but I think I think we should I think we should arrange some we have to be at the same place as as as Brandon and Kayf another time. I think that that was such a missed opportunity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I have to say the talk that Kafe gave at the event was really great at that event, and he said something during it that was controversial, and I just thought it was so funny because he said all the young people now are wearing beige and that it was so depressing for him. And then like two weeks after that event in Munich, Pantone released the colour of the year as white, and I was like, Cave's gonna hate this.
SPEAKER_01Well, actually, I had a question for you on that because you you've paid quite a lot of attention to colour. I know you it's it's featured on your blog, you talk about it a lot. Do you think the cut do you think the world is turning to beige? Do you share that concern?
SPEAKER_00First of all, I can't wear the color beige. So when it is popular, it's a problem. It's like everyone has the and I don't like the idea of a color you can't wear. I think it's silly, you should wear what you like, but there is one color that makes everyone look dead. Um, and mine's beige. I don't like muted colors. I don't wear I don't do a lot of neutrals, but there's a lot going on with that and the world turning to beige. First of all, things come and go. When I look at how colorful things were in the what they now call the Fruittiger, I think is how you'd pronounce it, era, like the windows landscape with like grass and trees and like everything was like graffiti and bright, like things were really bright for a while. And before that, they weren't. Before that, they were like muted 90s colors, and before that, they were the really bright 80s colors. So like things go in and out. I'm not worried that the world is going to lose its color and turn to beige, but I do see a flattening of culture because of like the digital nomad thing where coffee shops are turning beige, and internationally there's less culture on location in terms of design. And I'm seeing a lot more people in knitting specifically going to neutrals because they've just spent like 10 years creating the brightest, craziest things. I think it's more in knitting, it's really like the idea that when Pantone released that color of the year, one of the things they said was it's a blank canvas to fill, um, which is fine. But they also mentioned that it was a response to overwhelm and overstimulation in your environment. And I think that the white plane environment is actually not a reflection of anything other than a vibrant digital world. Like, we see color all the time, and it's exhausting. I think people actually are finding a space to retreat from screens in reality instead of the other way around, in a way.
SPEAKER_01Like so, neutrality becomes an essential part of your existence because you can't, because you're faced with this bombardment on social media, whatever screen you're facing all the time, that that you're assaulted by things that move and bright colours and stimulation, and therefore you need that neutrality in your other space, whether it's your coffee shops, your homes, whatever, because in the coffee shop, there are like 10 televisions, right?
SPEAKER_00Everything's got a television with colors and moving. So it's we're seeing a lot of stuff around, and like when I was in college, I did a project about losing touch like with the environment around you because your world was so digital, like as we got into smartphones. And I think you'd actually really enjoy the work. Like, I don't know if you read a lot of like theory, but there's some design theory. This couple Dunn and Raby, they work at they were at Central St. Martin's for a while, and they talk about emotional connections with electronics and stuff. They have a book called Herzy and Tales about how you emotionally relate to your electronic devices and like creating device. This is from like before the smartphone existed. So like they were writing about this for a long time. Their newest work has not been on that, it's been much scarier. Their newest work is all about like the like the their first work was about how like electronics can like heal you and help you, and now they're getting into like how it's like really evil, and it's like, okay, stop. End of all talk because everything they've done has come true. But like you can get emotionally attached to your screen, you can live too much in the digital world. We see it where people are even memes almost become a language, so people are speaking a dialect that's related to like the cultural center that's online. So, like this this is great. We met online, I think, technically. Um, like our first correspondence was over Instagram or something. Absolutely. Absolutely was. And so, like, that's great. But also, you can get stuck in that world. And so, to have a space where specifically what people are talking about with the beige spaces is that it is a blank canvas. You do this stuff, and then when you want to get out of that, you don't want to go back into your physical space and look around, and all you can see is like 10 different colors of wallpaper.
SPEAKER_01Got you. Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00So I get that.
SPEAKER_01I want to ask you a little bit, I want to move across to your experience of design because that's something you've done for a while, and it's another area of great expertise. I'm really fascinated as someone that has only recently started trying to document my designs and publish them. I'm surprised, I'm surprised about two things. In one way, I'm surprised about how in a way easy the design process is because you can do something, write it down, you can you can stick it on Ravelry and call it, well, I'm I've designed something and it's it's a published design. But on the other hand, I'm surprised about how difficult it is to create a design which is which has any kind of level of popularity where people actually want to buy a design and I'm really surprised you know, I've I've spoken to many designs about how about how unprofitable that is as an exercise for most of the designers in the industry. I'm interested from you as to whether that is a am I just new to that party and that's always been the case, or has there been a change in how it how you create designs and how easy it is to publish designs, build an audience over the last 15 years since you've been doing it?
SPEAKER_00So I think that there's been a change in how easy it is to build an audience on certain platforms. I see eras of people, waves of people coming in and out, and how they get started, and I was in one of those waves. Now I can look back and see I was one of those waves, and there are waves in front of me. Um, and at one point it was easier to get more traction on Ravelry, right? First of all, it was more of a central hub and not just like a database because I don't know if people knew how to use a Boolean search like normal humans. I it drives me crazy when people say Ravelry search doesn't work. But like it's a great resource, and people were more focused on it. When it was more social, though, there was more buzz around the new stuff coming from the site itself. So now it's more decentralized. It's on Facebook, it's on Instagram, it's wherever you have your followers, it's on people's mailing lists, and so you have to build that audience now. And I have to say, like, I was in this wave where I didn't have Instagram when I started designing, but as soon as I got serious, I had to, right? But then wave after me of people, they didn't really start on Ravelry, they were on Instagram, which is a lot much larger uh platform to get recognized on. So you have to like reach a bunch of people, and I think that's why it's gotten a lot harder. I I actually sincerely believe that it's harder now to get started, and part of that might just be that I don't know the landscape now, so if I were starting out now, I'd be starting in a different spot. But it does seem trickier, and I think that when people start designing though, they upload stuff to Ravelry, and you're right, it's really easy. You can just do it. In fact, that's how I did it. I just did it. And so until they've built on Ravelry, especially, because it's so easy to just publish, I think until you've built a little trust with an audience, they will not pay for a pattern. So I think that's part of it, is that you have to be willing to show people what they're getting, but also like what you can do. There's an interview process that I think of uh free patterns as an interview process where people get to see a little bit of what they would be paying for. So I always tell people like there are great ways, and I'm not advocating for working for free. This is not what I'm talking about, but there are great ways to reassure people if you're just starting out as a designer, to reassure people that you actually know what you're doing, and one of them is to create something free, and that can be on your own through your own website, which is cool and it's good for marketing, but there are also publications that will pay you to create a design and those get published for free. So then people can see your work, right? And they can trust you a little bit more, and I think that's a huge part of it is just the trust factor. Like with AI now, as soon as people see an AI photo on the cover, they don't know if the pattern's gonna be written by what they have no idea.
SPEAKER_01Do you think that that design process and you know i if you have a new designer who creates something wonderful, do you believe that the sort of the process for them to get their knitware designs out is can it be viewed as meritocratic? Is it fair that a great design created by someone who doesn't have that following yet, do you think that's a that's a really good question?
SPEAKER_00Because I can't judge that anymore in this environment, but I can say that when I was first starting, it did seem like it was a merit-based thing in some ways. So let's go over the ways that um people can have an advantage in this industry. Number one, I would say if you grew up as the child of an editor of a knitting magazine, you have an advantage. So we have the Nora Gone literally started designing sweatered patterns when she was 16 for like she did this forever, and her father was an illustrator, so she had that coming in a family background. I think that's the most extreme, like you were set up for this job case, right? But then we have the next level of people who have maybe a background. I see a ton of people who are architects designing sweaters, it's really similar. I have a degree in industrial design. There are people who are engineers, but in general, what I'm talking about is an art or design education. Yes, it's a meritocracy on design, right? The design that you are presenting, but your ability to communicate that design and your ability to make those instructions, because the instructions are the product, not the final thing. Your ability to make those instructions is definitely influenced by if you have a training in a background where you're communicating design, right? So people who are graphic designers or architects or industrial designers like me, or anyone who went to art school for fine arts for whatever, has an advantage there. Like, and then if you have good designs, like that's great on top of it. But like skill-wise, what I really feel is the people who really don't, the people who are really disadvantaged in this are people who come into it and are really talented with the knitting part of design, but don't have the other parts. So like the ability to do a pattern layout or to like work, I don't know, to do all the social media stuff, to take the the biggest one is like if you can't take a photo of your thing, it no one will care.
SPEAKER_01Because no one sees it. But it's but it's it's interesting. There's a few things you've just said there, which I think are so important. One is, of course, when you're buying a knitting pattern, you're not buying a finished object. And so what the finished object in a way looks like. The photo matters, but it sort of doesn't, the finished object itself isn't inherently valuable. The instructions are the a valuable part of it, and you never see the instructions until you've bought it. So that's that's an issue, that's a that's a huge barrier, unless you've got that familiarity with with the designer themselves, but also you can create the most beautiful garment or accessory, whatever it is that's knitting, but you're right, unless you've got a means of publicising that, either in a publication or some other way, it's also very difficult to make that accessed by lots of people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, we all have access to publishing now, but that doesn't mean that we all have access to like tech editing and photography. So there's that. Like it there I wouldn't say that you have to do those things when you're starting up. If you're gonna have free patterns, like go for it, have fun. Like, you don't need to pay people to have fun, and you shouldn't have to, but once you're selling things, it's a little different. I do believe if you're selling something, it should be edited by someone. But to get those photos, you have to hire a photographer if you don't have that skill, and that is actually harder. People do understand photography is important, but they don't necessarily know exactly what about it until they have some experience with like the internet, and like if you're just starting out and your goal is to put out a design, you shouldn't have to learn the entire like everything around it to do something. But for years, I will say, this is why I say I don't know in this environment what it would be like, but for years I said I'm anti-marketing because the designs can do the marketing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Like if it looks interesting enough, you know, it's the you know, the the product speaks for itself. It's like the the greatest restaurants in the world do zero marketing. They just you know, you you put great bites of food out and people will just rave about it and do the marketing for you. That's it.
SPEAKER_00Or, I mean, yes, but it's almost like a puzzle. I think of my customers as puzzle solvers because if you're looking, look, no one who's looking to make a scarf is like making the hardest scarf, right? So they're obviously seeking something more than a scarf. They're seeking some sort of entertainment and challenge, which is why I think actually, I think the Stephen West mystery knit alongs are not really ever about the product itself. It's about the group, the entertainment, the challenge, um, like taking on something as a personal challenge. Um, there's a lot in it, but a lot of people really are in it for the process. The pattern is the product, the finished thing is maybe something that you want to make, or maybe it's something that you're just working on learning, or you I don't know. People make things for all sorts of reasons, but it's definitely one of those hobbies where like we're not all making the same thing for the same reason. It's not like just for no no one's doing this just to stay warm, right? We're all trying to put something more interesting into it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very true, actually. It's interesting you say puzzle as well, because I have this sort of secondary concern about knitting patterns that so the scarf I'm wearing, sorry, I'll I'll take a step back. The scarf I'm wearing, I wrote the design for this. It's sketched out in a book of mine, and it takes up less than half a page of it's a sort of fiddle of a chart, but that's enough instruction there for me to knit this scarf. When it came to communicating that with other people, the pattern develops the sort of seven to eight pages of thorough explanation, alternative ways of doing it. If you know if this doesn't work, this is another way you can try it, if this technique works for you better, all of that, just very gentle ways of communicating with people, and of course you're presenting it in a chart as well as a written instruction. But it's interesting you say puzzle because if you want if you want puzzles in a way, there is a way to write patterns as a puzzle to make them more of a puzzle, which is you condense them back down to that very short form communication and say, right, here is a fit, like here's the finished garment, or maybe even not show the finished garment, but here is the very small set of abbreviations. Go and work out what you create with this.
SPEAKER_00I think it's an interesting thing because it really is about the death of like print media, this phenomenon where you have to explain everything in the same pattern. Because you said condense it back down to components, and I'm thinking that's easier. And I don't know when you started reading the big written description. I I don't know when you started reading patterns, though.
SPEAKER_01Like what So I feel I probably read my first knitting pattern two years ago or something.
SPEAKER_00And was it from a book or was it digital?
SPEAKER_01No, it was digital. The first one was definitely digital. And now but now.
SPEAKER_00I mean, like was it like like the first pattern for something that had like something going on in it? Like two stages or shaping or something, not like a stitch pattern. But like when you look at those, they're presented differently.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I find it fascinating, but also when like the inevitably the the patterns that I get asked for help for when I'm doing the bits of teaching I do, people are bringing in like small clippings of magazines, you know, those those classic old referring to it as an old style of pattern writing, but it isn't. It's the traditional style of pattern writing, which is just like the user is expected to know all of the knitting terms, is expected to be familiar with that layout, and therefore a very you know, you you can describe how to make a jumper in a couple of hundred words and that's it.
SPEAKER_00I think one of the things that we forget is that no one was expected to know that. I mean, some of the fit, some of the the tailoring, yes, no one was expected to just know it. When you get an old pattern and you're like, what does this mean? In the magazine, there was always an insert, or there was a book you could order that went around along with that publisher's notation. And the reason it feels so mysterious is partially because we don't have that. I see it all the time where people go online, they say, I wish there were a standardized thing for this. There is a standardized thing for this. Well, at least in North America, we have something called the Crafty Yarn Council. I'm sure that the UK has something similar that they decide what the terms are. They have them up on their website for free. You can go look them up, and they even have like it might be this chart symbol or it could be that one if it's this, you know, they have different styles, and it's all available for free, like those old magazines had reference books. So yeah, it is, I think it's a different mindset where some people who have the newer style, this is kind of what I was getting at. Like, when did you look at the pattern? Some people look at the thing and they're like waiting, kind of, or the style of how they read through it is more to like read through and expect that information all in one place. And so if you don't know it, it's great. But imagine if you've been reading knitting patterns for a long time, what information you need. And I think magazines are written very much in the style for people who are like, look, just give me the measurements, give me the this, I'll do it. And I think that mindset used to be really like if it fits, it fits. Things weren't always needing to be as exact. I think now people want the exact instructions written out stitch by stitch. If it's a garment, people don't want to be doing the neck while they're doing the sleeve shaping, you know, work simultaneously. And I think to myself, sometimes when I see stuff like that, like, okay, so I could give you like a 20-page pattern with every row explained, and each size would be different. Or I could just tell you, like, do some decreases along this edge while you do the decreases along that edge and make sure it ends up at the right number. They're not telling you that it has to be perfect. Like, I think that's where the new instructions or the new style of instructions where everything's very concise and explained are like a little bit annoying. Older patterns are just they're not missing information.
SPEAKER_01No, that they aren't. They're just they're just heavily abbreviated for or for someone that that can that can decode that easily.
SPEAKER_00Yes. They are heavily abbreviated, and that's a page space thing, but sometimes they're open-ended, and that's for a reason.
SPEAKER_01Like you know, like Yeah, you're you're right, because if you say like guidance in a pattern which says knit, you know, if you're knitting the body of a jumper, knit knit another 12 inches or whatever, or knit knit to length that you want, like, is a is a is probably a better way of describing it, but I I feel like people now would want more guidance, or certainly the more modern style of patterns is to is to have more instruction in there because people feel I don't know. I wonder I wonder to what extent it's also that knitting is if it increases in popularity, also you have people coming into it and wanting to get into let's say more advanced patterns more quickly than than you might have done historically, and and you don't necessarily have you're not necessarily walking through a basic set set of like I'm gonna do this pattern first and then I get upgrade to doing this and then I'll upgrade and do the next levels. If now you want to throw yourself in, if you see beautiful shawls on Instagram or whatever, and you want to throw yourself into you think, okay, I'm gonna it's my first knitting pattern, I'm gonna do a big Stephen West shawl. In a way, there isn't really much of a barrier to you doing that. The barrier is only your self-confidence and then and then the pattern itself.
SPEAKER_00There would be fights between editors and designers about, you know, if it's a digital publication, can you do a chart for the sleeve and lace in every size that's different? Or do we have to just say work in pattern while doing these decreases or whatever? Like, what is like it was just too much of a hassle, honestly, trying to figure out what people wanted from that.
SPEAKER_01So it's interesting. I mean, sorry, I'm interrupting you there, but I'm gonna go off on another thread in a second. I'm interested in your experience of of jumper design then, or sweater design. That because I mean another option which some designers take is that they release a pattern in a single size because they do create an object and you say, you know, I've made this and I can I can share with you how I made this one. And if you want to work out how to make it in an alternative size, I will leave that to you as the expert knitter to go and do that in a different size. That's not a route that's exciting for you.
SPEAKER_00So my first sweater was that. I went out and I got about six dollars of yarn in hot pink at the craft store, and I sat down with Shirley Payton's Knitwear Design Workshop book and like made a set-in-sleeve sweater. Like I drafted the pattern, and then I put it up on my blog and was like, it's my size, so have it if you're my size. It's not other sizes. I did this once to learn how to do it in this context, right? But then also, like, if there are mistakes, I'm sorry. These are my notes. So there is a I think there is, by the way, I would never charge people for that. That was like, I put it up on my blog, right? It's notes. But with something like that, I felt because I was learning, it was good to just share that. And I don't think that there's anything wrong. I think it's size inclusivity is is an issue because it's not anything that has sizes is not inclusive. Anything that has no size is also not inclusive. But anything that's not a recipe to measurements is not inclusive. So, like, just forget whether it's okay to have one size or five. If that's what you have, if that's what's done, it is what it is. Like, expect proportionate sales if you only make one size. But like, I I the main reason that I didn't like the grading process was actually because I wanted to do it mathematically nicely, and I didn't like compromising and making those decisions on where, like, if there was a repeat, where do you cut it off? I don't want to have to make that decision on how closely to round to a human shape which doesn't even exist except as an average in a computer.
SPEAKER_01I completely hear you. I I have this work in progress, which I go back to from time to time, which I got to be 360 stitches around the body, and I really wanted it to be 360 because I wanted to be able to use so many different motifs of different sizes, and I wanted the maximum number of factors going into so and 360 has like the most factors of any number remotely near it, so it's a it's a great number to work with. But in terms of like you couldn't you couldn't then go and grade that because it has complete numbers of repeats of every pattern all the way around. If you move any any dimension of it, it just doesn't work, it falls apart. But that's but that's the joy of making something for yourself, I guess, rather than if you're choosing to create something because you want it to be worn by hundreds or thousands of people.
SPEAKER_00So that's that's also like a designer, a designer of couture knitwear can make one-offs for people as a designer. And a designer can also design something for themselves that doesn't get sold as a pattern. They're still designing, but like those are two different both of those things are different than if you're designing for a full size range, right? Because you're taking measurements and you're making something specific. And they're different things because I find the thing that I didn't like about sweaters, like grading, basically clothing sizes, was making those calls on like which theoretical human, like which dimension is the best one to change on this thing, and like a lot of math. And then like You know, do people actually proportionally buy that thing according to like how much more time it takes? Not really. So, but for some people, their main thing is sweaters. People are making and buying more sweaters now than when I started. But if I liked it more, I would do it more. I sat on the ASTM sizing committee because I like making sizes good. I like making things right, but that's also why I don't like designing sweaters.
SPEAKER_01That's fair enough. We talked a lot about design, but I'm also interested. I referred to you in your introduction as an artist as well, and I I consider a lot of what you have done to be art as well as design. Or I mean to what extent do you consider those separate disciplines and do you separate and partition your time and your activity between when you're being an artist or a designer or a craftsperson?
SPEAKER_00When it comes to art and design, they're kind of the same thing in some ways, but they're two different things because if you're talking about art, what you're generally talking about is not a piece of instruction. I mean, we've got a few very rare exceptions to that. But what we're generally looking at is not something that's like to be recreated by someone else. Again, there are a few like exceptions to all of these things because they're like words and semiotics is like a thing. But like when you're making art, it's really not focused on you're focused on communicating through the piece, not communicating the piece. Does that make sense? So like a designer who's designing knitwear patterns is working on what what their focus is in their creation is the instruction, the ability to explain this to other people so that it can be created. Their intention generally is not like that's an artistic pursuit, like that's just to get people to do it, right? But with art, you would not be focused on that. You would be focused on the communication using the piece itself and the interaction with the finished product. So like I think with design, it basically comes down to yes, if you call it that, it is that, first of all. So if you call it art, it's art. If you call it design, it's design.
SPEAKER_01When you sit down and when you're working, when you're when you're creating something, are you conscious from the outset that you want to create something because you think it's going to be popular? You want communicated design? Or or do you flick between actually, do you know what, I'm just doing this for me, or you know, creating it for someone else, but it's a one-off and it's a more artistic pursuit. Do you have that delineation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. I create things for me and sometimes they become patterns if I think that they were good. And so that's cool when that happens. The other day, I was saying, I wish I could paint. I have a friend whose paints. Like, I went to art school. I know I can kind of paint, like I can't paint amazingly, but I can kind of paint. So I my friend was like, I'm gonna paint the thing for my living room, a big painting. And I saw her do the painting and I was like, huh, that came out really well. Maybe I should try painting. And I went down and I got my paints out, and I have canvases and all these, like I have oils and acrylics. They're some of them are dried out, but I I went to go paint and I was like, okay, now what do I paint? Like, I just don't have the like what I have no idea what I'd want to do. Like, I need a reason to make something. I don't just or not a reason to make something, but I need to be usually motivated by something, and my motivations tend to be material or stitch motivations. They're not usually final product or like conceptual, like metaphorical. Because I think that those are the reasons that people like make art is for aesthetics or for like meaning to say something, right? And like I don't know what I would those don't like I have no idea what I would if you told me to make something purely aesthetic, I'd be like, what?
SPEAKER_01I mean, uh there's something hanging on your wall behind you, which is aesthetic. Which one slightly challenge you there.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and I brought I put these up, these were in my office already, but I kept these up. I know not everyone can see what's behind me, but I kept these up because I I knew one question that you were going to ask was the art and design question. And so I have two things. One's pants with the stack stitches, and one is a short row thing, canvas thing, like it's on a frame. Yeah. And so I brought because you say what's the difference between art and design, and I think that most people would say design art. Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think that would like I anything that you probably because that because also you've got a function to one thing because of your the pair of trousers or pants if you want to call them that.
SPEAKER_00But Right, I forgot that's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_01That's that's alright. I'll I'll forgive you. But the trousers or pants there, I I guess because they have function. I mean they're beautiful because of that that pink stack stitch in the middle of them is is just magnificent. But they have function, whereas the other one you've hung on a wall, the fact that it's framed as well, I guess, makes more of a statement that it is it it's there for aesthetic. But both are pleasing to have on the wall.
SPEAKER_00So I thought it was interesting because one of these is something that could be replicated, and one of them is not. And one of them, they both kind of have instructions. Like, I take notes, but one of them was made in a way that you can get supplies at any store, it generally fits these standard things, and the other is custom, right? So, like, I think people think a lot about art and design as like museum versus shop in their head sometimes, and like because art's allowed to have a function. I don't know, there's no like there's probably there are some rules, but I I don't think that it's fair to say that there's not art that has a function. We've got a whole museum in New York City called the Museum of Art and Design, and it's kind of somewhere between craft and art, and it's because there's this argument. So people definitely debate it, but like I would think the pants, I could probably decipher the pattern and make them again, but I can't make them again. Like they're I improvised a lot of stuff and said, well, as long as it's symmetrical, I don't need to do it again, so it's fine, right? Whereas this is a very regular pattern and it's written it's written so that it goes on a s a standard frame and it can be stretched. So besides that, I now took like the hanging thing off of it, so it's not going back up.
SPEAKER_01I'm conscious of the time, and I've I've got a number of questions I still want to ask you. I'm I'm looking at my post-it notes here about which one I should which one I should go for. I'm curious, um Do you know what? I'm really interested in your development of the stack stitch technique. And particularly because also we're gonna date this, we're we're recording this right at the beginning of June, but you've just released another pattern where you've got another novel stitch that you've created, this flower stitch, which works beautifully on on specific types of yarn. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about your development of novel stitch techniques.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would actually love to talk about that. I think that what's interesting about this deck stitch technique is that people always say, first of all, it's mostly new, right? So I did research it before I put it out. I came up with this thing and I hadn't seen it. And it I researched to see if it was around, and I found some instances where there were similar stitches. Specifically, the decrease has been used in a few instances, but not with color work that I could find, and the increase was like nowhere. So I feel pretty good about calling it new. Like everything's built from components, right? So like with the the knowledge that a lot of things are done and not recorded, which is not new, it's not unique to knitting, so I think it's weird that we bring it up a lot in regards to knitting, like oh, it's unvented. Like everyone else does that too, and we don't discredit. But yeah.
SPEAKER_01You're absolutely right. I think in in knitting, in a way, is much more apologetic than than a lot of other industries or uh areas that you have to constantly be overly humble about about that. I mean, I I was interested because I was trying to research the stacked stitch technique as well in advance of this interview, because I came across like slightly differently worded statements about had you like some people say Zandy Peters created stack stitches, and in some places I've said you're the one that's responsible for significantly developing it as a technique. You know, I went back on Ravelry, and I I think you're the first stack stitch technique, though there was one published like a month after by Natalia Moreva, for example.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so Natalia and I talked about that, but there was another lady who published one like two weeks after. And there was what was so interesting was Natalia saw the technique and was like, wow, this is really cool. Like I've been doing like she had done stuff like this and other stuff, and she developed some of her own work off of the idea and like all of this stuff very rapidly. But this other lady was clearly working, and I would say a name, but I don't want to say the wrong name, but I can tell you the name off the record later so that you can put it in there if it's right. But basically, when the foxfaws pattern, or I think it was actually something else, it was the petal cowl, which is the cowl that I knit while watching. I know exactly how long it took because it was every season of The In Betweeners. So, and like I finished it when they were in the tent in the last scene of that show, which is a fantastic show. Everyone should watch it. But, well, maybe not everyone should watch it. But that cow came out like two weeks before this other pattern that was very similar with this wavy motif, and it was very clear to me. I started to get a few people, because people hadn't really noticed the stack stitch thing yet, but a few people who had started to email me, like, oh, someone copied you, and I was like, impossible. Time-wise, not possible. Like this was a slightly different technique, enough so that she had put in all of her own development, and there are a lot of ways to get a similar look. So, like, it was a different way of doing something that looks similar, but like keep in mind, like, I have watched in the last couple of months three designers that I know publish the exact same stitch pattern with the exact same shaping, and it's driving me crazy because I am stuck in this place where I'm like, I want to be like, you guys need to like do something else. Like, why are you all how do you all get to the same place without like what are you selling if you're all getting to the same place? And I know the answer is instructions, they're selling instructions, people like how they write their instructions, but I just think it's a lot of work to go through for something that's not kind of different than what's out there. I don't know. But like also people are working on things at the same time and have similar ideas because they're all living in the same world.
SPEAKER_01So sometimes that there is there is a common experience, and and there could be, you know, a few pictures, a few ideas, a few things that just happen within the you know, the current zeitgeist, which people pick up on and develop in a similar way at the same time, and and you arrive at similar designs as a result.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it happens, I think it happens a lot, like, and people write it off as a knockoff, but like the turnaround time on a knitting pattern is not fast fashion. So there's that. But I also think that so when you're looking at stitch development, one of the interesting things that happens is it is really all of those little mistakes that didn't fit in somewhere else. So I don't think of it as very much of a task. Like the sometimes I sit down intentionally to do something, like the stack stitch I sat down to do, the flower bobble, I sat down and was like, oh, this yarn should be a flower. Let's make a flower-shaped bobble. And I wrote an article about how that process went because I wanted to make sure this time. I wrote an article about the stack stitches way back, and you can still find it on my blog. But this time when I developed something that was like a new configuration, which is how I would describe this, I wanted to make sure that the step that I had before coming to this stitch was shown. So who was the place that I got this technique from? Where was the source? Like we cite people in academic papers. If you have a patent on something and there are previous works that you developed off of, those names are there. So with that in mind, you know, writing an article where it shows, okay, here's the book where I learned this technique, here's how that became that technique, it gives it more of like a credibility to the like you can still develop something completely out of your brain, and people know how to do it. Like people figure stuff out all the time, that's known.
SPEAKER_01So it yeah, completely. You can oh, but also just because you see something, there can still also be an element of working out how to do it or how to do it differently. For example, you know, that stitch I showed you, the chrysalis stitch, which I I again I'm tentatively saying that I think that I created it because I hadn't like the spiral one.
SPEAKER_00The the spirally one.
SPEAKER_01This one But that that one once when I published that in my l in a in a scarf, I saw someone put a tutorial online about how to do that, but in a different way. And it's interesting that people then say, Okay, well that there there are different ways to approach that as a technique and there's a different way of doing it. I preferred my way because you only had to hold one yard at a time, their way that you had to do it with two, which makes it much, I think, less approachable for a beginner. But but it's interesting, you know, once once you come up with a novel idea as well, it doesn't mean that that's the only way to do it. Another like part of the wonderful process of lots of people looking at a problem is that they you then get other approaches of how to solve it, which I think is an interesting process, but again, it takes you admitting there are some places where you go to and and that's a people just get very upset about has copyright been infringed or has trademark been infringed or some other concoction like that.
SPEAKER_00I put the stitches out so that the world knows where they came from, because the more I tell people about it, the more people know where it came from. And I'm not saying that what came before it is not important, but I am saying that if tomorrow a company copied not a pattern, but like if someone took like a stitch and like tried to protect that, they'd have no legal standing because it's all over the internet. I made sure that it was all over the internet, right? For a designer in a field where things really aren't protectable, and yes, there are weird things about copyright and instructions, and I'm not a lawyer, so none of this is legal advice, but I I think I'm supposed to legally say that, and since I'm not a lawyer, I'm just gonna do it anyway, because I don't know. But like, don't follow my legal advice, I'm not a lawyer. But when it comes to like how patterns are written, I see no advantage in trying to keep the instructions secret. All of my stitches that I come up with, I want people to like designers, knit anyone to use, right? The goal is for them to be used. And if you put a patent on that and you don't defend it against whoever uses it in the little sense, you can never defend it in the big sense. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's I totally agree, and I think that's so much of what you see in the knitting community is that people create stuff because they want to share ideas or or textures or fabrics or whatever it is that there's something that they want to contribute to this wider sense of the larger global community of knitters and and therefore the you know the idea of patenting runs absolutely against that because it's protective and and feels like it it limits the ability to to participate in that community and to be able to communicate broadly any ideas that you come up with. It feels more like gatekeeping than yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think so, but like I feel like also on like a practical level, it's not made for this. It's not made for this. The system to challenge it is not made for this. The requirements to become an IP lawyer are stacked against the chances of anyone who has any knowledge of anything textile beyond the chemical level becoming a patent lawyer, like it's it's not meant for what it's not meant for crafts, it's not meant for art. Patents are for that. So to patent like a component of something, the idea is that then you'd license it to people, which isn't I don't know, maybe someone should try that. I won't be the one. There actually there are people, and I don't want to get in like it's gossipy and it's old stuff, but there are people every once in a while they patent a concept for a pattern, and then they have to go on and like they just look like terrible people for filing all these claims against like individuals to protect it.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't, it never goes down well with the broader community. I think because because you have that community relationship in the broader sense is about creativity and about sharing and about community building as well. When you take those much more corporate, closed-minded protective stances on this can't be shared or this can't be, you know, this is a a legal process that I'm now going to go through. It just feels at odds with the sentiment of the community, which is why it's well it's also a hobby. Like for some people, it's for me, it's my job doing this.
SPEAKER_00For me, like I treat it professionally, but like I'm not talking to like someone who's working in a business office about what's going to a factory. I'm talking to someone who's doing this for fun. Like, and it makes it not fun if you file a cease and desist against them. That's not fun.
SPEAKER_01I agree. Zandy, I think we're we're gonna run out of time if I if I ask you any more questions. So I've I've just got one final thing to check in with you, and then I think I might have to have you back sometime because I there are some stories that I want you to tell as well. So maybe we'll have to set up another another session sometime. But before I say goodbye, is there anything that you would like to plug? You talk about how do people find you, how do people find your designs, your teaching? Where do people go?
SPEAKER_00So, right now, the best place to go to find me is either on my website or I guess on Instagram. But you can find me at zandypeters.com, and my Instagram is at zandypeters, they're all the same, and that's spelled with an X. But those are the best places to find me, and I am updating things all the time. As Adam mentioned earlier, I just came out with this new flower technique. So there's a free pattern up on my website for that in the form of a flower garland so that you can practice it and you know, find out if you like that technique before trying one of the more complex patterns. And if you go look at the blog posts about those flower baubles, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about, where you see how one technique from one designer gets into the hands of another and it becomes something else. Um, so it's kind of fun to look at if you enjoyed that conversation.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Thank you, Sandy. Sandy, this was everything I could hope for. I enjoy spending time with you so much because you are thought-provoking and just fabulous to talk to, so knowledgeable about knitting and design. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much for for listening as well for those of you who are listening to the podcast. That's it from me. Thank you, Adam. It was really nice to be here. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Yarn Library. If you've enjoyed the conversation, please do follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you have a moment to leave a rating or review, it genuinely helps more people discover the show. If you have a question, comment, or idea for a future episode, someone you want to hear me interview, email me at podcast at cleavelinits.com. And if you'd like to see this conversation or watch my longer form videos, head to Cleveland on YouTube. I'll be back very soon with another episode. Until then, thank you for listening. And happy netting.