Busy Man, Alasdair Post-Quinn

Busy man, Alasdair Post-Quinn was our guest on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird today.

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Alasdair’s began knitting in college, at a craft sharing event, where he was teaching an Origami class that nobody showed up for, so he went to sit in on a knitting class. His mother knit and other family, he thinks they didn’t teach him because they didn’t want him to have access to pointy sticks. From the time of the class he was hooked on it. His progressed from that first class by teaching himself. He found a book called ‘Reversible Two-Color Knitting’ by Jane Neighbor (sadly out of print) which got him inspired and exploring, ‘knitting in a vacuum’ having fun. He says the techniques were undocumented, so he began to write patterns and sharing what he was learning. 

His first pattern, The Corvus Scarf, which was designed for his sister who was an amateur ornithologist, particularly studying Corvids or crows and ravens. He approached Cooperative Press as well as other knitting book publishers. He met Shannon Okey at a Knitting Guild meeting in Boston, afterwards what he was knitting caught her eye and somewhere in the conversation she told him ‘You have to publish a book about this’ and eventually that came to be.

Alasdair Post-Quinn is the author of the book “Extreme Double-Knitting: New Adventures In Reversible Colorwork” (published by Cooperative Press in 2011). Because of the progress he was making at that time, he admits the pattern may have rough edges, but the opportunities to learn techniques is present. It was written as a primer for those who have not done double knitting.

Hesperos scarf will appear in the upcoming book!

Once the initial accomplishment of that book wore off, about six months, he began planning for the next book. By that point, he’d already learned more double knit techniques, like Double-Knit Cables, both with a cable needle and without. Alasdair says he knew how to do cables before, but this was a more ‘elegant way’ to do it. His new book in the works entitled “Double Or Nothing” will be out sometime in late 2016. (PLEASE NOTE: that last link is to pre-order the self-published book. He also shared that he will be able to drop it in the expected price with more of us pre-ordering. HINT, HINT!) While he was working on ”Extreme Double-Knitting” he attended Cat Bordhi’s Visionary Authors retreat, as a unique potential author in that he already at a book deal with Cooperative Press. What he learned, he says, about self-publishing worked so well with his adventure with CP, that it was almost like self-publishing, which he will be doing with “Double or Nothing”. He says having his first book published was wonderful because you share in the work, you share in the process, and then the process. With this one, he will be printing locally, everyone behind the scenes like tech editors, sample knitters are all local. As he used to layout a newspaper, he has the background in design to do this on his own.

There was another book he self-published between “Extreme D-K” and “Double or Nothing” called Parallax that included 5 patterns. If that term is unfamiliar, Wikipedia says: ‘Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight, and is measured by the angle or semi-angle of inclination between those two lines’. The patterns Alasdair has included are really the visually stunning images that make the eye think it’s looking at curved surfaces…. SERIOUSLY cool!

Alasdair lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and cat; his day job is in computer repair. In his spare time, he travels around North America to teach, and he’s slowly transitioning to spending more time designing, publishing and teaching double-knitting techniques and patterns. We can continue to follow him at his website: www.Double-Knitting.com, he also has a blog, and a Facebook page. Double or Nothing can be pre-ordered, to get on that mailing list, CLICK HERE! Also, he has a Craftsy Class for those who learn by watching others, USE MARLY’S LINK.

If you missed getting to hear this LIVE it is also archived where it aired originally: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/yarnthing/2016/07/07/busy-man-alasdair-post-quinn or with your favorite podcast catcher like iTunes or Stitcher Radio. You can also watch the behind-the-scenes video through Marly’s Facebook Page.