Dawn Brocco Kit & Pattern Giveaway

Thank you to everyone for entering...

Congratulations we have our 3 winners!  

1st Winner is CarolyninCary

 Baby's Crochet Flower Blanket Kit Cascade 220 Wool 3 hanks 9428 Thyme & 4 hanks Forest Green 8267 & PDF

2nd Winner is Ikkinlala-Gabriella PDF

3rd Winner Amchart -Cable & Tweed Throw Pillow PDF

Winners please email me at Sandrasingh@sandraisngh.com to claim your prize!

She is knitter, hear her roar!  Dawn Brocco has taken knitting and life by storm and we are lucky enough to be along for the long tail cast on.

Knitting and designing patterns for print and indie publication for nearly 20 years.  Specializing in updated classics, innovative shaped cable designs, and whimsical, nature-inspired knits for children and the home.  Dawn is a phenomenal knitter and takes you by the hand, or needles if you will, and walks you through each design step, by, step, giving you the knitting experience you crave and deserve.  I had the pleasure to meet Dawn early in my career and her work has been featured on Sandrasingh.com for the past 7 years.

For this blog giveaway Dawn and I have teamed up to share her story and giveaway 3 of her beautiful patterns.
 1st Winner: Baby's Crochet Flower Blanket Kit Cascade 220 Wool 3 hanks 9428 Thyme & 4 hanks Forest Green 8267 & PDF pattern
2nd Winner: Gabriella PDF
3rd Winner: Cable & Tweed Throw Pillow PDF

Baby's Crochet Flower Blanket

Dawn's Baby's Crochet Flower Blanket will bring a smile to your face! The motifs are quick to make and portable, great for summer traveling. They are then sewn together into flower groupings, then those groupings are joined to create the blanket.  Knit in Cascade 220 Wool.

Gabriella

Gabriella was meant to turn heads with her snug, cropped shape and sweet little lace pattern!  Lace can easily turn a thicker yarn into a spring or summer garment. This sweater knits up quickly, thanks to the yarn weight, as well as the cropped length and fitted shape.

Cable & Tweed Throw Pillow

The Cable & Tweed Throw Pillow features an I-Cord piped edging, center shaped cable overlay, and textured fabric that add plenty of visual and tactile interest, creating a conversation piece for your living space, which is also soft and comfortable to use.   The design offers just enough knitting complexity to keep you interested, and enough of an easy fabric stitch pattern, to work on in spare moments.  

I had the pleasure to interview Dawn and I know you'll enjoy getting to know her and be inspired by her as much as I have.

1. Every knitwear artist has an interesting story about how they began designing.  Please tell us about yourself and what got you interested in knitting and designing knitwear.
Back in the late '80's, early 90's, I taught myself spinning, natural dyeing, rug hooking, and weaving. I had school-age children, then. I hadn't written poetry since before they were born, having instead invested my creative urges in making baby food, gardening, quilting, and sewing some of their clothes. The move to other textile arts, when they were older, seemed a natural progression.

After doing the usual crafts shows, I opened a tiny shop in our small town, selling my handspun and some knitting and crochet supplies and Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop books, from Schoolhouse Press. Why, I don't know - I did not knit! But it must have been fate.

Up until then, I hadn't learned to knit. Not really. Every previous attempt, using straight needles, ended poorly, so I focused on other textile arts.  My shop, as one might imagine, only lasted 6 months. After selling off what I could, I still had a few copies of Knitting Workshop, so I decided to read it and give knitting a go, again. Especially, as I had handspun to use up. These were the pre-home computer/internet/Etsy days, when handspun/handwoven/handmade wasn't valued, as it is now.

I barely got a few chapters in, before I bought some circular needles, and then cast on my first design - a circular, Fair Isle yoked pullover in my handspun yarn.  Elizabeth empowered me, and many other designers, with her percentage system. Of course, that sweater, meant for me, fit my 10-year old daughter - I hadn't learned about ease yet!

But I loved doing stranded colorwork, and knitting on circulars was, and still is, heaven! It all evolved from there. The wheel and loom were long ago sold, when we moved to an antique house, to restore it and run a B&B, but knitting and designing have been a constant creative desire all these years.

2. What is your design philosophy?
My designs don't stem from one genre or creative need.  I love to create seemingly, complex-looking designs (nothing really is as hard as it might look), like my shaped-cable work, but I also like to create Nature-inspired work, and, once in awhile, a quirky take on a simple idea pops into my head or onto my needles.  I'm open to wherever the Muse of the Day/Week/Month points me.

 

In general though, after nearly 20 years designing, it's not satisfying to design simple work - one needs to be challenged, in order to grow, so I move from easy to complex, depending on how much challenge I'm in the mood for. An easy design will surely be followed by the need to stretch myself.  Though, to be honest, I began my designing career with many stranded colorwork designs, and steeked, no less, which some knitters think is, or find to be, hard to do, but which I never found to be so, possibly due to my unusual Untensioned Continental Variant knitting style.  But this has been the same with my all my textile explorations - I took to them all as if I was just remembering it all, from previous lives, or a cosmic pool of info.

Or maybe, I just never told myself I couldn't do something, so I could then do anything, if I put myself into it.  If you're passionate about something, there is no room for fear. And Life is so much more enjoyable when approached with Passion!

3. Who or what inspires you the most in your design process?
I appreciate other designers' excellent work, like Norah Gaughan's cabled designs, as such a body of work not only exemplifies that designer, but will live on, for its ingenuity.  I'm not talking about fame, I'm talking about authenticity.  What drives me is the desire, the need, to be authentic. To honor myself by doing my best work, as it says who we are. That when I'm gone, the work I leave behind won't just be more of the same. Well, at least not all of it!

4. What direction do you see yourself heading in as a designer?
I don't think that far ahead, any longer- I have no idea where I'm headed.  I'm not one of those 5-year plan people. Life can't be planned. Or rather, every time I try to plan anything, Life has other ideas in store for me, like nearly losing the sight in one eye, like getting cancer, then adrenal issues, and having to work to rebuild myself. So I don't plan.  Cancer changed my perspective. I'm here today. I'm working today. I'm being creative today. All I want is that I can be creative, and hopefully inventive, every day I am alive, as it's not a life I'd want, which does not allow for creativity.

5. How have the advances in technology and the internet helped you (or hindered) you as a knitwear designer?
Advances in technology and the internet have done both, hindered and helped me, as a designer.  It initially made it easy to reach knitters with my designs, but it has also made it easy for knitters to become instantly-published designers, without necessarily gaining invaluable designing and pattern-writing experience via submitting to print publishing, so the market has been flooded for awhile now.  Having your work judged, and often rejected, is a necessary experience for any designer.  Competition for knitters' attention has become so difficult. The choice is great for knitters, not so great for full-time designers (which translates into every waking moment - there are no 40-hour work weeks for the self-employed), who are trying to also weather a recession. One must be stalwart and believe in yourself and the creativity you have to offer the world.

Dawn thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us.  Please take a moment to enjoy Dawn Brocco's designs. 

  

Pullovers, Vests & Cardigans

Boots & Slippers

Children

Accessories and Home Decor

Tea Cozies

The 3 winners will be announced on June 29th. The patterns will be emailed to the winners as a PDFs.

Enter this Giveaway: The more ways you enter, the more chances you have to win. Make sure to leave a comment(s) under this blog post telling what you did to enter. And please make sure to leave your contact information.
1. Tell us which Dawn Brocco pattern is your favorite and why.
2. Blog about this giveaway on your blog & link it, leave a comment under this blogpost with a link back to your blogpost.
3. Join my Ravelry group, Sandrasingh.com and introduce yourself in the "Welcome tell us about yourself..." thread.
4. Announce this giveaway in your Ravelry group, or in a Ravelry group that allows you to announce blog giveaways.
5. Friend me a Facebook: Sandra Singh and write a comment on my Wall about this giveaway.
6. Announce & link this giveaway on your Facebook Wall.
7. "Like" my Facebook Page, Sandrasingh.com
8. Follow me on Twitter: Sandrasinghcom
9. Announce this giveaway with a link on your Twitter page.
10. Follow this blog.
11. Sign up for my Newsletter on my Home Page.