May Authors Who Knit: Sheri Cobb South

Sheri is one of several knitting authors who will be joining me at ROMCON in Denver in June.  For this month's Authors Who Knit, let's meet this versatile writer:

Sheri, What’s on your needles right now? 

A lap robe. My church (Faith Evangelical Presbyterian in Loveland, Colorado) has a group called KnitWits, and one of our projects is providing lap robes for patients at a dialysis center, where the rooms are kept at a rather cool temperature. Unfortunately, the pattern I’m using takes double strands of worsted-weight yarn, and since it uses two colors, it means I’m juggling four skeins of yarn. Sometimes I feel like I spend as much time untangling yarn as I do actually knitting! I have to remind myself it’s all in a good cause.

What feels like your favorite/greatest knitting accomplishment? 

A baby blanket I made for my great-niece won a blue ribbon at the fair. A sweater I’d crocheted also won a blue that year. Since it was the first time I’d entered any needlework, I was rather pleased with myself!

What feels like the worst knitting mistake/foible/wrong choice you’ve ever made? 

Other than choosing a lap robe pattern that requires me to juggle four skeins of yarn? Hmm, I don’t remember exactly what I did, but I once had to take over a hundred stitches off the needle, rip out several rows, and then thread all the stitches back on. I have to say, crocheting is much more “forgiving” than knitting, as far as correcting one’s errors!

Straight or circular needles? 

I can use either one. The aforementioned lap robe is on a circular needle.

Metal or wood needles? 

Metal. I know some people don’t like the noise they make, but to me the soft clicking of the needles is one of the subtle joys of knitting.

White chocolate, milk chocolate, or dark chocolate?

I prefer dark, but I like milk chocolate, too. I tell my husband that I don’t believe in white chocolate; if it doesn’t contain cocoa, it isn’t really chocolate!

Coffee or tea? 

Usually coffee, although I can drink iced tea, too. And, being a Southerner born and bred, I take them both strong and sweet!

Have you written a knitting character? 

Sheri's current release

Aunt Hattie, the heroine’s ditzy aunt in my Regency romance Of Paupers and Peers, is very big on charitable works. When we first meet her, she’s fretting over her knitting. She’s been making gloves, and one of them has come out with only four fingers. (Did I mention she’s ditzy?) She’s hardly a poster child for knitting, but she was great fun to write about.  After the glove fiasco, she turns her attention to a project to send candles to English missionaries in darkest Africa. When our heroine, her niece, asks her why candles, she says, “My love, you cannot have been listening! Darkest Africa, you know!” 

What’s the last thing anyone would suspect about your knitting? 

I’m a lefty and I knit left-handed, so everything I make is actually a mirror image of what it’s “supposed” to be. In most projects it doesn’t matter, but with, say, a sweater with buttonholes, I have to be careful to reverse the pattern or the holes will end up on the wrong side.

DestiKNITters, if you'd like to know more about Sheri and her books, visit her website here.