The Return of Designer, Teacher Andi Smith

The Return of Designer, Teacher Andi Smith was our theme today, it’s been a couple of years since she was on the Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird.

Right off the bat, Marly revealed a big secret of Andi’s: She’s a crocheter! Andi is known for her book, Big Foot Knits, published in 2013 by Cooperative Press, but she says crochet is what she does to relax. She loves the old Victorian-styled doilies.

Andi Smith is from the Yorkshire area of England, she came to the US for school. She went back to England and came back to the the States where she met and married her husband. An acquaintance gave her name to someone from Ohio looking for sample knitters, who turned out to be Shannon Okey, who we know as the wonderful publisher Cooperative Press. That was how Big Foot Knits came about. That was the subject of Andi’s earlier visit to the Yarn Thing podcast.

Andi’s next adventure was self-publishing her next collection (she says she didn’t feel it was enough content for a book) Synchronicity, a series of patterns based on two-color cables. She says people think it’s a complicated technique but once they realize they are knitting with one color of yarn and purling with another, they are very excited.

She says she’s working on another collection of gradients, specifically mini-skeins! Those are so popular, I can’t wait to see them. She also says using yarns from independent yarn dyers is where much of the credit for the beauty of her designs should go.

The newest thing Andi Smith shares with us is her new Craftsy Class, Save Our Stitches: Fixing Crochet Mistakes. (Marly’s affiliate link) The classes flow through Reading Patterns and Understanding Charts, Gauge, through Ripping Out, Cutting Out the problem or Patching it. Sharing this knowledge really puts Andi atop the pile for helpful resources for crocheters.

Andi can be found pretty much everywhere as KnitBrit, for instance Ravelry, Facebook and Twitter. She says she is in Instagram, too, so you can follow her there! Here is the link to her earlier visit in 2013 to Yarn Thing podcast with Marly Bird.

If you missed getting to hear this live, you can catch it live as an archived episode here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/yarnthing/2015/08/25/the-return-of-designer-teacher-andi-smith or in iTunes.

The post The Return of Designer, Teacher Andi Smith appeared first on Marly Bird.