An Interview with me and Spincycle Yarns

I published Under the Canopy Cowl in April and brought you a lovely interview wit Spincycle Yarns. That was me interviewing them, but what you may have missed if you weren’t subscribed to their email newsletter is that they interviewed me too! So I wanted to bring that interview here too.

Andrea in profile wearing a dark colourwork cowl with leafy pattering and gradient blue and orange colours.

Andrea in her black and gradient colourwork cowl looking over her shoulder.

From Spincycle:

To tell you that we are smitten with this incredible cowl is an understatement! When the queen of charts, Andrea Rangel, tells you that she's making a beautiful, forest canopy-inspired cowl with our Dream State & our American mill crush Harrisville's Nightshades, I'm telling you, you do a happy dance! This cowl is absolutely stunning!

Aside from her incomparable talent, Andrea is literally one of the very first knitwear designers we ever met, back when we were all just kids! Her designs marry a beautiful aesthetic with major technical skills, including knitting her own outdoor wear! Lucky for us, we called in a friend favor and asked Andrea to tell us a little bit more about her and her process. Read our interview below.

• How did you cultivate your love of knitting?

My grandma taught me when I was little. She used to make doll clothes for me and she knit and crocheted blankets. I had other interests in middle and high school (I loved tae kwon do and drama!) but when I went off to college, I saw my auntie knitting, and I became obsessed. She put some needles and yarn in my hands and they just remembered what to do without my brain helping at all! I think it was just the kind of fidgety, take-everywhere creativity that I needed during what was a pretty stressful time for me. I did it all through college. I did it during my first career as a teacher, and it’s what I ended up doing for work after I stopped teaching. I didn’t expect to be a professional at it, but I just kept doing it and eventually discovered that I didn’t want to do anything else.

• We’ve known you for so long! You might actually be one of the very first designers to knit with Spincycle! Care to share anything about that long relationship and how you, and we’ve changed over the years?

I was definitely in awe of the two of you and your yarn when we first met at Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle. Every skein seems so wild and so perfect, the colours all called out to me. I didn’t want to leave your booth because I just wanted to keep looking and squishing! But I also didn’t want to make it weird, so I probably purchased just one or two precious skeins and forced myself to walk away.

I still didn’t know that much about yarn, and it seemed magical to meet people who made it. Some of my first designs were made in Spincycle Yarns for Knitty and it’s been inspiring to be using your yarn all these years as you went from spinning it all yourselves to buying a mill. The way you’ve grown as a company has been so impressive! I’ve designed almost 200 patterns now and I still get inspired every time I pick up one of your yarns.

• Tell us about the rest of your life!

My design business has been my main thing for about 10 years and it’s been fascinating to learn about how to run a business while I’m doing it. There are so many elements to it that there’s always more to learn. A few years ago I bought a real camera and started practicing photography and I’ve found that I love it! It’s really useful for marketing my business, but I also just like to take pictures of birds and flowers. Practicing a different kind of creativity and getting to be outside really refreshes me for the rest of my work. If I could imagine adding any other professional activity to my life besides design, it would be photography. I’d love to try taking portraits.

I don’t have kids or pets, but my partner has been a big part of my design work, especially when it comes to writing books. And fortunately we both enjoy going outside and looking at things very closely, so we take a lot of very slow-paced walks together. We’re also really enjoying climbing (in a gym, not outside cause I’m pretty risk-averse) and bicycling.

And of course I have to mention how much I love to sew. Being a pattern designer, clothes just really fascinate me and making clothes in a non-professional capacity is very fun. It’s such a different activity from knitting that makes me think about my work in a different way. The selection of yarns and fabrics you have at your brick and mortar store make me seriously swoon and I’m dying to make a pilgrimage there some day soon!

• What's in your tool kit?

The needles I love using most, are my Hiya Hiya interchangeable’s. They’re just so slippery and pointy! I have a beautiful little needle case that was made by Bookhou where I store them & it’s a very precious package!

I can’t be without a few tapestry needles, and some very plain round stitch markers, no fancy dangly ones. I also use my kitchen scale constantly. For blocking I love my stainless steel T pins & blocking mats & I use a clear acrylic ruler for measuring gauge.

What do you have coming up?

The biggest thing I’ve got on the horizon is a new book! KnitOvation is a new colourwork stitch dictionary (a companion to AlterKnit Stitch Dictionary) that will be published with Penguin Random House/Interweave in October. Pre-orders are actually already open, so if you want to have a peek at the cover, and maybe hit that pre-order button head to my website, andrearangel.com. And just like AlterKnit, KnitOvation will include a pattern featuring Spincycle Yarns! I clearly cannot stop working with your yarn and it’s just so perfect for colourwork, so thanks for being a part of the project!