At just 210 yards for the project, you can get one for you and one for a friend out of a single skein of many sock yarns... While you're dreaming about which project to make first, here's my interview with Cassie:
Jennifer Chase-Rappaport: We both had patterns in the same issue of Knitscene that involved pictures of animals that seem to be anomalies in both our portfolios. Mine (Huntress Shawl) involved a funny story of Lisa Shroyer asking me to step WAY outside my comfort zone. Does your Nocturnal Pullover have an interesting story that might be worth telling here?
Cassie Castillo: I am frequently asked about that owl design, so I’m happy to share the backstory. I remember one of the themes for that particular issue was about animals. At that time I was still working in the fashion industry, so I was seeing owls on pretty much a daily basis, and thought it would be fun to make some sort of knitted motif with an owl. I had been reading the book “Creating Original Hand-knitted Lace” by Margaret Stove, and felt brave enough to try designing my own lace design. I found a photo of an owl on Google and opened it up on Photoshop, then laid over it a grid based on how many stitches and rows I wanted the motif to be. Then I filled in an outline with little circles to represent the yarnovers and added in the decreases. I made my best guesses in a few places, then knitted up a sample to see how it looked. My first owl was really long and skinny! There was lots of trial and error involved, and it was really a lot of work for a design that might not have even been published, but I am really glad that Lisa liked it enough to include it in the magazine.
JC-R: After reading your blog, I am really impressed with the amount of adventurous (by my standards) sewing that you do. Do your sewing and knitting influence each other or stay completely separate?
CC: I wish that they did! My wardrobe would be much more cohesive if I had some sort of method to my crafting madness. Mostly I just sew whatever I can’t find in the store, and about 90% of it is dresses. I prefer to wear vintage-style dresses and have my hem fall just above my knees. I bought a coverstitch machine a few months ago and I’m still learning how to use it. Once I feel comfortable with it, I plan on making all my t-shirts. I suppose t-shirts will match fabulously with all the sweaters I knit!
JC-R: You have a pretty full schedule of designing for both publications and your own line of patterns. Do you have any “recreational”(i.e. designed by someone else) projects on the needles right now? If so, what and/or what types of projects do you like best?
CC: I typically only knit for my work, so using someone else’s pattern would be a really guilty pleasure. Every time I get a new knitting magazine in the mail I drool over all the beautiful designs and add them to my queue anyway. Maybe when I’m old and gray I’ll get to knit some of them! Since I can’t seem to really separate ‘work knitting’ and ‘fun knitting’ I usually use my fun crafting time for sewing.
JC-R: Do you have a favorite type of yarn to work with? (either generally in fiber or texture, etc. or in specific)
CC: I’m so boring, I tend to gravitate towards smooth wool yarns. After using the amazingly soft and squishy Malabrigo Rios, I think I want to live the rest of my life in merino wool. But by using the same type of worsted weight wools over and over, I have quite a collection of leftovers that allow me to create my colorful stash-buster designs. I can tell you that the kind of yarns I usually dread working with is pure cotton. I find it is really hard on my wrists, and I’ve had a few experiences where several of my fingers went numb. Switching to bamboo needles has helped quite a bit, but if anyone has any more advice, I’d love to hear it! Whenever I work on a warm weather design for a magazine, I keep my fingers crossed and hope that if they send me a cotton yarn it will be blended with another fiber.
JC-R: Are there any books and/or tools that you can’t live without? There are a few books I always refer back to for my designing:
CC: “The Principles of Knitting” by June Hemmons Hiatt. This is a massive textbook-sized encyclopedia of knitting techniques. If it’s not in this book, it probably doesn’t exist. “Knitwear Design Workshop” by Shirley Paden. Some of the math calculations in this book still boggle my brain, but for me there is still a lot of good information on styling. I usually refer back to the information about shaping sleeve caps. “Knitting Patterns Book 250” by Hitomi Shida. Although I can’t read Japanese, this is my most favorite stitch dictionary for really unusual and unique stitch patterns. They are all charted clearly, and it isn’t too difficult to figure out most of the symbols.
JC-R: Do you have some current sources of inspiration or influence you think will be informing your upcoming designs?
CC: I’m always inspired by vintage clothes. Most of my Pinterest feed and pins involve vintage clothing. It is usually the small details that jump out at me, like pockets and collars that you don’t see anymore in mass-produced clothing. “I Love Lucy” is my favorite TV show, and quite often I study all the beautiful clothes Lucille Ball got to wear.
JC-R: Any plans or projects for the near future that you’re able to share?
CC: I wish I could say I was really organized and had all my designs planned out for 2015, but I mostly design as I go. I guess I have a hard time scheduling months in advance because publishing with magazines is so unpredictable. You know as well as I do how hard it is to send your proposals and wait, wait, wait to see if it is accepted or rejected. Then if it is accepted, you make your sample and pattern and wait another six months before it is published. I have a corkboard with little pencil sketches of all the design ideas that I really love, and whenever I am not working on a project for a magazine I try to work on one of those. But there are far more sketches than I will ever get to make, and I’m constantly coming up with new ideas.
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