Wednesday, March 19, 2014

March Industry Professionals Who Knit: Amy Kaspar

You may know her as the Chicago Knitting Examiner or as blogger The Fiber Friend, but I know her as yarn buddy Amy Kaspar.  DestiKNITers, meet Chicago's delightful, dedicated fiber journalist!

Amy, what’s on your needles right now?  
A pair of socks so I can sock along with a neighbor on her first pair, the Deborah Newton Asymmetrical Tunic that I feel like I will never finish, and a bias-knit scarf for review on the loveknitting.com blog.


What feels like your favorite/greatest knitting accomplishment?  
Completing a Scarf of the Month Club challenge in 2012, where I designed one scarf per month for a bunch of subscribers.  I finished (close to) on time AND there was a bonus pattern, so really it was thirteen very diverse scarf patterns in twelve months.


What feels like the worst knitting mistake/foible/wrong choice you’ve ever made?  
Not making a proper gauge swatch before knitting a garment. And I challenge anyone to tell me they have made a worse mistake. ;-)


Straight or circular needles?  
Either; I'm not picky except that I'm not comfortable using fourteen-inch straights.

Metal or wood needles?   
Metal for everything except socks.


White chocolate, milk chocolate, or dark chocolate?   
Did someone say chocolate?  Oh, I'll go with dark...it's the antioxidants, you know.

Coffee or tea?  
Green tea for leisure, coffee when absolutely necessary.


Have you encountered a knitting character in a novel or movie that you liked? 
I LOVE when knitting is represented in entertainment! My favorite knitting reference in a book is right at the beginning of Little Women, when Jo is complaining that she can't go and fight in the war with her father, and she has to stay home and "knit like a poky old woman."


What’s the last thing anyone would suspect about your work in the fiber media world?   
I only fix the mistakes in my knitting if it is being photographed for the column.  Otherwise, I keep on knitting...mistakes prove that something was hand-made! I made a pair of socks with a cable pattern, and one sock has a cable that twists the wrong way. Instead of ripping it out, I call that "the left one."  But if I were writing about those socks, I would have ripped back and corrected the cable.


Your Raverly name: TheFiberFriend

Give a shout out to your favorite local yarn store:
I cover thirty yarn stores in the Chicago area for the column and I think they all have something amazing to offer the local community, but I attend Knit Night on Mondays at:
Knot Just Knits
1107 Westgate 
Oak Park, IL 
Want to know more about Amy?
Click HERE for her Monday tip and Friday product review blog at loveknitting.com
Click HERE for her Chicago Knitting News column at The Examiner 

Next up, DestiKNITions hits the beach--Myrtle Beach, that is.

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