I’ve been fangirling over Sophie of The Knit Purl Girl for a long time. I’ve always loved the wearability of her designs, her beautifully considered WIP shots, and the calm, editorial feel of her feed. There’s something really special about how methodical her whole approach is. I love watching people’s process and seeing how ideas come together from that first spark all the way through to a finished piece, and I think all of us who follow Sophie will agree that watching her pieces develop from cast-on to finished object is so satisfying, plus her feed of lovely photos feels like taking a deep breath. It’s just so soothing to scroll though.
Also, do you know what’s amazing about this interview? It’s not every day you can say you’ve basically had a long-standing fear talked out of you just by chatting to someone, but today I can honestly say that’s exactly what’s happened! I’m no longer scared of grading knitwear, and I’m actually genuinely excited to give it a go thanks to all this brilliant advice. Now if I can just get someone to help with with the maths phobia everything will be perfect…
In this interview Sophie chats about how knitting helped her overcome the stresses and anxiety of studing and academic life, her design process, PhD trauma, the horror of Intarsia (same, girl) and being 50% Mod, how cool is that?
Hi, Sophie! While preparing for this interview, I was amazed to learn that you only began knitting in 2019 – your work feels so refined and fully formed that I would have assumed you’d been doing it for much longer.
What first drew you to knitting? Was it something you picked up as a new creative outlet, or had it been an interest you’d wanted to explore for a long time?
I had tried to get into knitting several times as a teenager, but I was never very good at it. I was quite good at drawing, but I don’t have the best hand-eye coordination and something about knitting never made sense to me. In the year between finishing my MA and starting on my PhD course (more on which later!), I was a bit of an anxious mess while I waited to hear if I had won the funding I would need to be able to do the doctorate. I think I was getting on my mum’s nerves a bit, which was fair enough – I’m very fidgety at the best of times and more so when anxious! She gave me some needles, yarn, and a very basic pattern for a baby’s toy. For whatever reason, that time it stuck and I was totally hooked on knitting. I very quickly progressed to buying overpriced We Are Knitters kits and dabbling in the indie pattern market. From there, the obsession spiralled and gradually took over my life (in a good way!).
I think knitting is a very soothing activity, as it’s a process with guaranteed outcomes. I went through a lot of upheaval between 2019 and 2022, but I always knew that if I cast on 22 stitches with DK yarn and 4 mm needles, I’d get about 10 cm of fabric. There’s something really comforting in that for me, and I love that it allows me to explore the creative and technical parts of my mind at the same time.
A lot of the designers I’ve spoken to over the last few months come from creative families, or had a mother, grandmother, or other influential figure who first taught them the basics of knitting, crochet, or sewing.
Was there anyone in your family with a background in knitwear or fibre arts, or are you the first person to really explore that world?
My mum, aunt, and grandmother are/were all very good knitters, but I wouldn’t say that we’re a particularly creative family. Then again, they didn’t have the options that I’ve had, so who knows. My mum taught me the basics of knitting and has been really encouraging with it all. There are big age gaps in my family so my grandmother was in her 80s and had dementia by the time I was born, but my mum has childhood memories of Nan making cable vests at a very fine gauge for my grandfather. Sadly I don’t think anyone’s seen those vests since the early 1970s, but I would have loved to have been able to compare notes with my grandmother about those projects.
My dad trained as a scooter mechanic when he was young (it was the 1960s and he was a Mod – need I say more!) and worked in garages and car dealerships for the majority of his career. When I think about what I do now, I actually think that this more mechanical mindset of questioning how things come together is just as relevant as more traditionally “creative” skills.
I should probably also give some credit to my partner, who did go to art school for university. I was 18 when we started going out, so we were together while we were at uni and I got to see a more formal design process of crits, design refinement, and portfolio collation through him. I probably absorbed more of that than I have really realised before. Ironically, he’s now got a “normal” job in construction, so we’ve sort of had inverse career paths over the last 13 years.
The closest I’ve ever come to being a clothing designer is making baby jumpers – mainly because the idea of grading for adult sizes completely terrifies me! That’s why I admire designers like yourself who are so thoughtful, organised (I have seen your Stories about your amazing spreadsheets!), and dedicated to making sizing genuinely accessible for everyone.
Do you genuinely enjoy the grading, maths, and technical side of design, or is it more of a necessary part of the process that you’ve learned to embrace?
See I think baby jumpers are really difficult to grade well! It’s all relative.
But yes, I do love a good spreadsheet and I really do enjoy the grading. Obviously, coming up with designs and then knitting them is the most fun part of my job, but I don’t think I’d have been able to keep it going for this long if I didn’t enjoy the more technical aspects. Depending on my confidence in my abilities and time, I sometimes get my patterns graded (shout out to my amazing editor who is the best person in the world, as far as I’m concerned), but if I can I will always be very happy to get into the knitty gritty with the maths. I particularly enjoy grading raglan and contiguous sleeve sweaters.
I always compare grading to sudoko. It’s closer to solving a logic problem than doing “true” mathematics, but equally it may just be that I find it easier to do maths when there’s a practical application. I hated maths at school and learnt more about my GCSE teacher’s messy divorce than the nuances of algebra, so I really don’t see myself as a skilled mathematician. But I am good at logic puzzles, and I think that if you can manage them, you should be able to get on okay with grading. All the information is there (the target size(s) and the gauge), so it’s just up to you to think through the problems and make some executive decisions about fit and style. Again, there’s a degree of certainty to the process that I really enjoy. It’s challenging, but also very soothing and fun once you get into the flow. At the risk of sounding like a bad self-help guide, I think that the best way to improve is through challenging yourself past your comfort zone. You’ll never learn anything if you stick with what you already know, so if you’re curious about grading I strongly recommend trying it for yourself.
I know you have a background in academia, and I’ve actually been following your work since the days when you were finishing your PhD – which, if I remember correctly, was connected to currency in ancient Italy?
I’m curious whether your academic background has influenced your approach to design at all.
Do you think your studies have shaped the way you think about your work, your creative process, or even your brand identity?
Honestly, it feels like a different person looking back on my time in academia. But, yes, well remembered! I quit the PhD in the final year as it was making me incredibly miserable and I knew that there weren’t any realistic job opportunities for me on the other side of it. I was on the cusp of a full breakdown and wasn’t functioning very well at all. It made more sense for me to go all-in on the business and to try and move on. That decision is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.
My time in academia absolutely affected my thought processes. I’m a very obsessive person and am prone to circular thinking and ruminating, which can be a real pain but also very useful when applied constructively. I think my time in higher education taught me how to channel these thought processes into more productive outcomes. I know that I can do a lot of difficult work in a short time frame if push comes to shove, and it definitely made me a better analytical thinker, communicator, and researcher. I really wouldn’t recommend a PhD to anyone, as I know too many people who – like me – just had an awful time during a doctorate. But I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am had I not spent those 3-ish years on my course, so I can’t really complain. (Although give me 2 white wines and I probably will start to complain. Quite loudly.)
Sometimes people see knitwear on their feeds and think it looks beautiful, but it can be hard to imagine how it would actually fit into their everyday wardrobe. One of the things that really stands out about your work is how thoughtful and wearable your designs feel.
Do you ever feel drawn to experimenting with more avant-garde shapes, techniques, or colour palettes, or do you naturally gravitate toward pieces that are easy to wear?
Yes, I totally know what you mean! I’m a very selfish knitter and only really want to make things that I want to wear (and knit!), so my designs do end up being on the more low-key, casual side of things. Where I do get more experimental, it tends to be with more technical details like fun shoulder constructions rather than really fashion-forward pieces of clothing.
That being said, I do enjoy playing with colour. I go through strong phrases with different colour palettes, and like to have fun coming up with different combinations. Sometimes that means working with lots of iterations of the same colour family (I had a big blue phase in 2024), and other times it’s building a more cohesive range of shades across lots of different projects. I’m really into an olive green based palette at the moment, with accents of watermelon pink, chocolate brown, and beige at the moment. I like the stories you can tell with colour, and how you can bounce off other creative businesses within the industry. I’m using the most beautiful olive green yarn from Loom Wool at the moment for a cabled sweater, and it’s really influenced the design choices I’m making more broadly as I want everything I work on for the next few months to look good with that shade of yarn.
When you’re running a business, it’s hard not to look at the financial side of things and measure success that way, and as long as I’m still enjoying it and finding new areas of growth, be that technical or financially, I’m happy.
Which designers or artists have been an influence on your work? Do you ever get inspired by items you see on the high street and try to recreate them in your own style?
Very much so! I keep an album on my phone of pieces I see on the high street and while online shopping so I’ve got some design references at hand. Some of my most successful designs, like the Farnham Sweater and Tee, were actually inspired by shop-bought RTW garments. I was able to come up with a fairly innovative short-row stripe construction method for the shoulders, but the basic “look” of the original sweater design was lifted from a jumper I’d bought as uniform when I worked at Whistles.
That being said, I do try to take a step back and only use those design references sparingly. For me, the fun of designing knitwear is putting my own spin on a concept, so why would I want to make a 1:1 copy? I’ll try to come up with my interpretation of, say, a cable or lace motif and iterate on it a few times until I get something that feels fun to knit and looks nice. For example, I was really inspired by boho lace blouses while working on my forthcoming Isabel Top design recently, but I wanted to put my own combination of lace and texture stitches together for it. I spent a lot of time playing on Stitch Fiddle to try and iterate different versions of the motif before I got to the final product.
It’s fair to say that the world of fibre arts has changed enormously over the past few years, and the creative industry as a whole seems to be facing a lot of challenges right now.
How do you see the future of the handmade knitwear industry? Are there any shifts or changes that make you feel particularly hopeful – or concerned – about where things are heading?
I’m very optimistic about the future of the handmade knitwear industry. I think a lot of people thought that the crafting bubble would burst after COVID, but as far as I’m aware the data shows that more people are engaging in hand crafts than ever before. The market is very saturated, but good ideas still cut through and I’m a firm believer that a rising tide lifts all boats.
However, I am very conscious of how reliant my business is on social media platforms. My marketing is primarily done through Instagram, and YouTube is also an increasingly important platform for me. If they went away or if the algorithm took against my content, I don’t know what I would do. I do the vast majority of my trade on Ravelry, so I’d be in trouble if that site went away. I’m 31, and have already seen the rise and fall of several seemingly successful social media sites (RIP Vine), so I do worry about digital instability quite a lot.
All the same, I try to exist in the moment and not to worry too much about what could happen. I can’t possibly anticipate every possible issue my business could face within the next 5 years, so I don’t see the point in using my energy that way. Doing lots of yoga helps with this haha!
Which of your designs are you the most proud of and why? How do you tend to measure your success?
This sounds SO cheesy but I’m most proud of the designs where I’ve learnt something and feel I’ve grown as a designer. I quite like revisiting and updating my older patterns every few years, and I think it’s nice to have a tangible benchmark of how I’ve improved as a designer. I recently re-released the Semper Sweater and Slipovers, and I’m really pleased with how much better those patterns are now – although I’m sure I’ll look back again in a few years and find room for further improvements. Equally, I’ve pushed myself to work with more cables and lace in the last 12 months or so, and have really enjoyed that process. When you’re running a business, it’s hard not to look at the financial side of things and measure success that way. But I do try to take a more holistic view of my work and as long as I’m still enjoying it and finding new areas of growth, be that technical or financially, I’m happy.
Most of us knitters have one technique that we don’t enjoy and try to avoid as much as we can! If you could name one that you don’t like, what would it be?
Intarsia freaks me out! It’s the one technique I’ve never really gotten on with. I can do it, but I don’t love the process so it’s one that I’m happy leaving for others… I’m also not a big accessory knitter as they don’t scratch the itch in my brain the way that garments do.
Finally, what does the future of The Knit Purl Girl look like, and do you have anything exciting planned for the future?
Hopefully more of the same! I’m generally very pleased with how my working life is at the moment, so I’d be really happy if things could keep going at this pace for another couple of years. I’m also in the process of buying a house at the moment, so my brain is pretty occupied with my personal life admin right now. I try to alternative between growing and consolidating the business over a 2-year cycle, and 2026-27 is a consolidation year for me so I really just want to keep things as they are as much as possible.
I’ve got my design schedule more or less fixed in until the end of 2026, so really I’m trying to get those designs over the line. I’m also working part-time on a maternity leave contract for Unravel… A Festival of Yarn, which has been really fun. It’s interesting to see how the industry works from a different angle. I go back and forth about writing a book, but I find working to other people’s deadlines very difficult (PhD trauma!) so I’m not sure how well that would work in practice. I think I’d need to get my regular pattern releases squared away first and then think about a concept and start on some samples. Then again… Maybe I should take my own advice and try to exist in the discomfort of a challenge for a bit.
Thanks so much for taking the time out to answer these questions, Sophie!
You can discover more about Sophie and see her work by following her on Instagram and shop her patterns on her website.
Don’t forget to check out last week’s interview with the Skein Queen that is Rachel Barrett of Flyy Dyed, and happy crafting!
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