Designer Feature: Corrina Ferguson

This week in our Designer Feature, we will be getting to know more about the Designer of the Orsina Hat (and our technical editor!), Corrina Ferguson. It was such a pleasure having Corrina on our team this year. She is such an encourager, and is wonderful at finding all the little technical errors that can sometimes get missed!

Corrina lives in sunny Florida, where 60 degrees is sweater weather! She is a knitting designer, instructor, and tech editor who has published designs in a wide variety of magazines, books, knitting websites, and with yarn companies.

You can find her work online at craftstarstudios.com , on Ravelry or on Instagram at @craftstarstudios

The Orsina Hat

Turn your lace knitting on its side for a unique hat that is easy to knit and fun to wear! The pattern includes four sizes and looks fancy, but just uses basic stitches. You knit a flat lace piece, turn that flat knitting into a tube, add some ribbing and a crown, and you’re good to go!

Our Orsina Hat is made with Valley Yarns, Haydenville DK in Light Pink. It’s such a beautiful, yarn, and as Corrina shares below, would also be lovely for baby projects!

Our interview with Corrina

We love getting to know our knitting friends better; here is our interview with Corrina.

Thank you so much for designing such a beautiful project for our 2022 Knitter’s Planner! Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind it?

Well I definitely wanted a floral feeling lace, and the petal pink color that was chosen for the design was just perfect! And we knew we wanted a sideways construction, but the yarn and the stitch patterns just wanted to work together!

Tell us a little about the yarns you worked with for your project.

The Valley Yarns Haydenville DK is dreamy to work with. It’s a perfect machine washable blend of merino and microfiber. And I will definitely be using it for some future baby projects I have in mind – one of my best friends is pregnant.

How do you go about designing knitwear? What is your design process?

In general I start with the yarn. It’s rare that I am working on a project or collection and don’t have the yarn already in mind or preferably in hand. I tend to do big swatches testing out all the different stitch pattern options and making sure I understand the gauge and how the yarn will behave. I used to keep all my design notes on paper, but I’ve moved towards having a full Dropbox folder with notes, charts, and usually a spreadsheet with all the relevant numbers and calculations. I also give all my self-published designs a product number so that I can easily find everything I need.

What type of yarns are you drawn to? Would you say you have a distinctive style?

I’m definitely a wool girl – which isn’t overly practical living in Florida. I’ve recently fallen in love with all things linen in my clothes, so I’ve been dreaming up a lot of things in linen blends. As far as style I’m very comfort driven. I want to be comfortable and cool – hence all the linen.

Tell us a bit about your knitting space. Do you have a dedicated space just for knitting?

I do the vast majority of my knitting in one of two places – my recliner or the passenger seat of my husband’s car. We got matching big ‘ole Ikea recliners a few years back and they are magical. And I keep a small tray next to me with notions, scissors, a gauge ruler… lots of tools so I can crank things out. When I’m in my husband’s car I even keep a mini stash of tools in the door handle well.

What techniques do you really enjoy?

Lace is probably my favorite thing to knit – I like the beautiful ways the increases and decreases move the yarn. And I’m obsessed with knitting charts so taking something from chart to yarn always brings me joy. I’ve been playing around with brioche lately, and I really think that there is a brioche lace design in my future.

What is your favorite feature of the Knitter’s Planner?

It made me so happy when I realized I could get my copy of the Knitter’s Planner with graph paper. I have an unreasonable love for knitting charts so I feel like all paper should be graph paper!

What is the one thing you can’t live without?

In a knitting context I would say it’s emergency knitting. I always, always regret it when I go somewhere and don’t have a project with me. I tend to carry my current WIP (work in progress) with me where ever I go, but I also have a plain old striped sock that has been in progress for oh 5 years or so? It is the second sock and I do live in Florida so don’t judge me too harshly! But that’s my emergency knitting so I’m never caught somewhere without something to keep me occupied. Phones just don’t do it for me!

What do you want to do more of in 2022? We’d love to know!

I’m thinking in 2022 I need to spend way more days at the beach. I didn’t do enough of it these past few years and I regret it. It’s a short drive away and I always feel better for going. The beach is good for my soul. And of course I always bring my knitting.

And speaking of beachy knits, Corrina will be giving away a three copies of her fantastic book, Warm Days, Cool Knits, on our Instagram this week! Do make sure you’re following us there to enter!