Designer Spotlight: Snowflake by Stephanie Mason

Stephanie Mason describes herself as an “all around crafty lady.” She knits, crochets, embroiders and whips up beautiful new designs at an impressive pace. Recently, she set a lofty creative goal – to design and publish 100 baby sweater patterns in one year! She’s even set up a website to share her progress.

#16 on Stephanie’s list is a cozy crochet cardigan called, “Snowflake.” She used Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light for this adorable two-tone sweater. The body is worked as one piece, while the arms are worked flat and seamed. The snowflake motifs are crocheted separately and sewn on at the end. Stephanie also added a bit of embroidery as a finishing touch. The pattern includes instructions for sizes 3-24 months.

How long have you been knitting/crocheting?

My mom, step-mom and grandmother all tried to teach me to knit when I was about 8, but I didn’t really have the patience for it. When I was in high school I decided I wanted to learn for real, so I got a book and taught myself. A few years later, I learned how to crochet. I’ve been doing both pretty steadily since then.

How did you come up with this design? 

I knew I wanted to get some wintry patterns out with enough time for people to actually complete them. The idea of snowflakes just seemed natural, especially since they work so well with crochet. There are so many pretty crochet snowflakes in the world!

Did you make it for anyone in particular?

All the babies in my life (none of them my own) are boys, so this one was more of whim.

Any knitting disaster stories?

One of my very first knitting projects was a hilarious disaster. When I first learned to knit (remember, I was in high school) I really wanted to make the bikini from Stitch ‘N’ Bitch. But being oh so creative, I decided that instead of doing stars or the lightning in the original pattern, I was going to do a little cat. My idea was that I would have a cat that had its little paws up like they were hanging over a fence or something – like a little cat icon that you would see on the internet. Not having much foresight as to what it would actually look like on a bikini, I proceeded to knit this cat face & paws with fuzzy novelty yarn. So there’s this fuzzy cat head on the bikini bottom and fuzzy cat paws on the triangular portions of the top. I encourage you to take a moment to picture this. I took one horrified look at my creation in the mirror and tucked that project away in a drawer forever.

Do you have a cool design you want to share?  Or did you recently finish a project with Berroco yarn?  You can email Ashley: apalumbo@berroco.com or post it to the Berroco Lovers forum in Ravelry.