21 Crocheted Tanks and Tunics by Sandi Rosner

21 Crocheted Tanks and Tunics by Sandi Rosner was not Deja Vu, we asked her to come back to the Yarn Thing podcast when we knew she had a new book coming soon!

Sandi Rosner is the Executive Creative Director at Premier Yarns which includes the Downton Abbey line that we spoke of recently, but also the Deborah Norville and Isaac Mizrahi collections, as well as some private labels available at your local craftstores. She began crafting as a crocheter, then learned knitting later from yarn labels, magazines, books… Knitting took over her life, she even owned a yarn store for a while, then she went freelance designer, teacher, writer (I think she missed tech editor) and then moved from California to North Carolina to work with Premier Yarns.

Many know Sandi may think of her as a knitter. She says she spent a lot of years wrapped in knitting, but working with Candi Jensen (who we may know of through Knit & Crochet Now) has been leaning more toward crocheted. Plus the yarn industry, as Sandi is well aware, realizes that the majority of yarn purchased is intended to be a crochet project. Even though many think of crocheters as the granny squares and kitchen hot pads.

Pam Koenig (at the time an editor at Stackpole books) approached Sandi to create a book of crocheted tank tops, this was about four months before she began at Premier. Sandi is very organized, even though the full-time job suddenly seemed to intensify the deadlines. She began the book by creating a list of ideas, that included the detailed designs and silhouette, also attending a TNNA and approaching yarn companies for their suggestions as to what they would recommend for the various ideas. Then, Sandi began to work on every piece, none if it was farmed out to a sample crocheter, her crochet designs are basically done ‘On The Hook’, and making good solid notes.

21 Crocheted Tanks + Tunics includes fairly simple designs, straight-forward stitchwork, to create garments people would want to create and wear. The sizes range 32″ to 52″ finished garment for the simpler designs, on the more complicated ones, between 36″ to 46″. Yarns chosen were intended for summer or warmer climates, so she looked for washables in linen, cotton, bamboo, silks are not generally machine washable, but a luxury fiber can be so worth it. Colors that photographed well, brights and favorites, in blues and greens that Sandi enjoys in the summer. She also enjoys the sculptural feeling of crochet, verses the ‘autopilot’ of knitting for her, and she finds she can feel her way along in the crochet. A small change can yield big differences in the fabric. The patterns can be viewed in Ravelry.

Sandi finds these days she’s crocheting about 50% of the time, the rest knitting, which has become a big change to before she came on board with Premier. At this moment, she’s working on a pattern for a flyer to be available with yarn in stores. Sometimes inspiration comes with the yarn samples that appear in the offices, like the Plum Blossom Shawl in Willow Yarns.

Follow what’s new with Sandi Rosner by following her Designer page in Ravelry. Here also is the link to listen to the last time she was on, in January of this year. If you didn’t get to hear this live, you can listen to the archived episode on your favorite podcast catcher like iTunes or Stitcher Radio. You can also watch the behind-the-scenes video on the Facebook Page!