S5 E5: Community, Culture & Inclusivity with Knitwear Designer Aimee Sher

Designer Aimee Sher joins Felicia Lo for an inspiring conversation about creativity, inclusivity, and the evolution of modern knitting. Aimee shares her journey from knitter to designer, offering a behind-the-scenes look at her thoughtful design process, her commitment to size-inclusive patterns, and how yarn choices shape her work.

They dive into the influence of fashion trends, the role of accessibility in pattern writing, and the impact of community through test knitting and teaching. Aimee also reflects on how her Taiwanese heritage and climate awareness influence her craft and how she balances her love for knitting, weaving, and spinning with the demands of a growing business.

Tune in for an honest and uplifting conversation full of insight, inspiration, and a glimpse into what’s next from Aimee Sher.

Takeaways

• Aimee's journey into fibre arts began after having a baby.
• Knitting provides a sense of purpose and identity for parents.
• Inclusivity in patterns is a priority for Aimee.
• Accessibility in pattern design is evolving.
• Aimee's designs focus on practical and wearable garments.
• The importance of considering different body shapes in sizing.
• Yarn choice significantly influences design decisions.
• Aimee avoids following other designers to maintain originality.
• The trend in knitting is shifting towards more fitted garments.
• Aimee's creative process is heavily influenced by the yarn itself. Aimee designs primarily for her customers and test knitters.
• The knitting process can be time-consuming, often taking 40-60 hours for a sweater.
• Trust from test knitters is crucial for successful designs.
• Cultural background influences Aimee's design choices and fabric selections.
• Aimee's grandmother was a professional crochet designer, linking her to her heritage.
• Designing with climate in mind is important for Aimee's work.
• Aimee enjoys exploring various textile arts beyond knitting, including weaving and spinning.
• Balancing craft and business is a challenge for Aimee, requiring careful time management.
• Aimee finds joy in the creative process and the learning that comes with it.
• Future projects include new patterns and expanding her shop offerings.

Transcript

Felicia Lo (00:00.769)
Wonderful, thank you so much for being here today, Amy. It's really, really exciting to get a chance to sit down and chat with you. I've been looking forward to this call for some time now. Thanks for being here.

Aimee Sher (00:09.87)
Me too, thanks for having me.

Felicia Lo (00:12.651)
Yeah, so we rescheduled this chat because you had just come back from teaching. Now I'm just really curious about what you were teaching and where you were.

Aimee Sher (00:23.582)
was in Kansas City, Missouri last weekend. So not this past weekend, but the weekend before that. And I was teaching at this lovely little retreat put on by a yarn shop called Unwind. And I was there with Amy Gales and Andrea Louis and Ken Conaton. And it was just kind of a really fun, multi-craftual experience. People were learning spinning. People were learning.

crochet Andrea taught a bunch of organomics classes and it was just it was a lovely time

Felicia Lo (00:59.585)
That's so funny. I had just talked to Andrea for the podcast, maybe just a couple of days ago. That's fantastic. So it sounds like a really super multi-craftual sort of retreat kind of event. Fantastic. So people coming into that, did they already know all the different crafts or are they being introduced to them for the first time?

Aimee Sher (01:02.03)
very cool.

Aimee Sher (01:10.604)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (01:20.49)
So I believe the unwind staff taught like a beginner spinner class and then an introduction to the electric eel line because there's such an affordable entry point and accessible. So for people who want to learn wheel spinning, that's kind of a good. And you know, you can bring like 10 of them in the car and then it's recently, I bet that's a nice class to teach just because you can bring fun and then people can try things out.

Felicia Lo (01:30.282)
yeah.

Aimee Sher (01:47.83)
And it's really made these kinds of classes more accessible also, I think, because previously, teachers would have to stock all the wheels. hopefully, they made some new spinners. It's exciting.

Felicia Lo (02:00.587)
Yeah, that's a great way to do it actually. Super, super accessible. Way easier than trying to carry your wheel or find a wheel and then bring it on an airplane and things like that. Fantastic. Well, thank you. I really wanted a chance to sort of chat with you and learn more about you and what you do because over the past couple of years, your videos and your reels have been popping up on my Instagram. And the more and more I saw them, I was like, I'd like to meet her.

Aimee Sher (02:07.676)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (02:30.527)
I'd like to chat with her. She sounds cool. yeah. And so maybe if you want to talk a little bit about like a bit about your background, how you got into knitting and how you got into design and sort of a little bit about your background and your journey so far.

Aimee Sher (02:31.089)
That's so nice.

Aimee Sher (02:42.254)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I started sewing when I was like 12 years old. I made those little nine square quilt blocks in school and then after that I learned how to, I taught myself how to sew garments from patterns that I found at Joann's and so then I've been sewing and quilting on and off my whole life but after I had a baby and I got kind of trapped at home

I, my interest in the fiber arts kind of took off because I really wanted to learn things and I think I was feeling kind of stagnant because I didn't get to go out and learn new things and take classes for. My at the time day job which was teaching piano and do all the continuing education so I taught myself how to knit.

became like a pretty prolific sock knitter and I really love knitting socks. So eventually as people do with sock knitting, I memorized my favorite ways to make a sock and then started adding things to it. And that's kind of how we got here.

Felicia Lo (03:50.237)
Mm-hmm. That's awesome. So that's so funny that like when you had a baby, it kind of ignited all of this creative energy that you felt like was kind of stuck. And I feel like that's so funny because when I had my baby, we went to these things called baby days. And so we brought our three month old babies until they were about like six months old or something like that. And as a community, we would all bring them to this community center.

Aimee Sher (03:58.306)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (04:08.803)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Felicia Lo (04:16.073)
all the babies on the floor. And then there would be like a counselor who would talk to all of us about like week by week. This is how you feed the baby. This is how you put the baby to sleep. And then they had one week that was on self care and they're like, what do do to take care of yourself? And there were moms who were like, I go do yoga or I go for a run. And I said, I go to the attic and I hide and I make things in there. And they all looked at me like, okay.

Aimee Sher (04:17.358)
You

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (04:31.031)
Aimee Sher (04:40.781)
That sounds awful, but it's so nice. sounds like something that, like they should worry about you, but your attic is amazing.

Felicia Lo (04:53.057)
Right, so I feel like just hearing you say that, I'm like, there's someone in the world who feels just like I do.

Aimee Sher (04:57.678)
Yeah, because it gives us a sense of purpose and identity and feels like, I feel like sometimes when you have a newborn, it can sometimes feel like every day is exactly the same. It's the one before and the one before and the one before and they're all the same. But having a lot of projects and making progress towards these things kind of gives me a sense of purpose that's separate from being a parent, which is really nice. And that satisfaction of completing something because, know.

Felicia Lo (05:20.215)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (05:25.326)
I'm going to be a parent for the rest of my, hopefully for the rest of my natural life. So that project is never ending. But a knit project can be finished.

Felicia Lo (05:28.823)
Yes.

Felicia Lo (05:34.975)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, with your knitting and your knitting socks, guess socks is great because it's really super portable. So you can take it everywhere with your kids and everything. So what ended up being your very favourite way to knit socks?

Aimee Sher (05:41.87)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (05:50.324)
So for a long time, I hated the heel and flap gusset, like many people, mainly because it was fussy and it was hard to do on the go. know, the picking up stitches, if I'm in the car, that's like, it's horrible. But I realized that because I have a high instep, I have to knit either a heel flap gusset with a longer heel flap, or I have to knit a flea goal.

Heel so those are kind of my go-to now Otherwise, it does that thing where it stretches across the top of my foot and I just I need that extra instep so I'm bummed but it kind of rolls me out for a lot of things I love to knit and make like afterthought and other short row heels That's not fish looks because those are all gonna be a little bit

Felicia Lo (06:23.905)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (06:37.674)
odd on me and then it kind of pulls forward onto the bottom of my foot. So I do still make them, but I don't reach for them to wear as much. And I'm nothing, I'm like a very practical knitter. I know there are knitters who are in it for the process and they love making something like really artistic and really beautiful. But I don't know. My assistant says that our aesthetic is like a Midwest mom chic. Like you can put it on, you can put on my designs and go pick up your kid in it.

Felicia Lo (06:44.875)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (07:07.232)
and you won't feel like your shirt is screaming to the world. But I really respect people who make those things. It's just that I feel really self-conscious. So if my own aesthetic is more pared down. all of my things are very practical.

Felicia Lo (07:21.131)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (07:25.856)
Mm-hmm. So, I mean, obviously you went from socks to then moving into a lot of garments. Was that like you were just knitting a lot of garments or do you just jump in with all the designing portion?

Aimee Sher (07:29.166)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (07:36.288)
I was knitting a lot of garments and I think I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about how they're constructed. And I think it was, at first it was really difficult for me to wrap my mind around construction because the current trend is kind of that top down in the round and it feels like everybody's first one, including mine, is gonna be a top down in the round raglan with very little variations in shaping. I had already sewn several raglans by

Jen Beeman at Green Line Studios and her patterns are exquisitely graded. And I just kept thinking like, how can this possibly turn into this? it just, some of the shaping was not quite what I was used to in sewing. So I kind of came at garment knitting from a very sewing perspective. I had a lot of trouble with like overfitting when I was learning to sew. I would think that things had to be very tight in every dimension. And I didn't understand that wearing ease in every dimension, know, impacts.

the fit in different ways and you can't just pick one number for every dimension, all of that stuff. So I kind of bring that approach to my knitting as well. And then as soon as I started designing garments, really, at the time it was important, it still is, even from the beginning it was important to me that everybody is included in my patterns and that anybody who wanted to knit it is able to. So very early on we had things like large print versions of our patterns.

Felicia Lo (09:01.495)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (09:03.212)
And then also my very first garment pattern was with actually Pom Pom magazine. So I never planned to become a garment designer because I felt more comfortable in sewing. But I pitched a sock to Pom Pom and at the very bottom of my two page pitch, I had a little sketch and was like, this would also be a nice sweater. And they were like, we want the sweater, design the sweater. And I was like, no.

Felicia Lo (09:31.381)
Hahaha

Aimee Sher (09:33.144)
So I hired a grader for that first one and I learned so much working with her and then I realized it was really fun, kind of like a problem solving little puzzle to try to figure out how to get the same garment to render across all the different sizes, especially because knitting stretches. So the ease situation is interesting and fabric choice, yarn choice, all those things are super interesting to me. They all impact how it drapes and how it looks. that became kind of like a rabbit hole.

special interests that I dove down into and because at the time, Pom Pom had a very, you know, for the time, I feel like it was kind of unusual for magazines to be like, it has to be 60 inches, epitome for the top size. It has to fit a body that's 60 inch circumference. So from then on, I just kept doing it. I was like, yeah, that makes sense. I want everybody. I want to be size inclusive because I want, you know, every customer.

I want more customers. want all the customers to be available to me. So I kind of did that. But then I also really wanted to make sure that I deliver a good product across the size range and not just have it up to 60 for no reason. So then I tested the upper sizes really intensively early on in now. And then I kind of became known for being really size inclusive and having well-graded garments.

That led me to kind of think about my approach to fit and what the things I bring over from sewing into knitting and why that's working for a lot of my test knitters. And I've had the pleasure of working with certain test knitters in the upper part of my range, the upper half of my range, over and over and over again and learning from them about how knit, how knitters can modify patterns. Cause in sewing we can just mock up, cut out a quick little muslin, base to size and the shoulders together and

voila, you know how it's gonna fit, now I can cut into my real fabric. But to achieve that much mock-up in knitting, that's like 40 hours of knitting. So we have to get creative with trying to figure out how to do that, but in knitting.

Felicia Lo (11:40.075)
I have so many questions. So many questions right now. There's so many things I want to unpack. So I guess the first thing is that, yes, I bought one of your patterns and when I downloaded it, I was really surprised at first. And I don't know why I was surprised. No, I was really surprised.

Aimee Sher (11:41.783)
Yes, please, go ahead. Yes, please.

Aimee Sher (11:59.394)
That one is really long. It's one of the longest ones.

Felicia Lo (12:05.985)
But you had multiple versions and that's exactly what you mentioned. Like there was a version that was like laid out and it was beautiful and you know, really lovely. And then there was another version that was high contrast, really big letters. And yeah, but at the time I was like, that's a nice thing to have. But then in the past couple of years, my eyes have changed so much that yeah, like just, was like almost overnight, my eyes changed. And so now realizing,

Aimee Sher (12:07.704)
That's right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (12:17.834)
Mm-hmm. It's like a hundred pages long.

Aimee Sher (12:27.634)
have they? Mmm.

Felicia Lo (12:35.095)
that version of the pattern that has the big type and the high contrast is so, so important. And then it takes away one bit of friction where I might have to get like my phone or I might have to get reading glasses or I might have to do whatever in order to be able to read the type on a pattern. And I think that we were all young people at one point in time. We were all young. like, oh yeah, never going to need that. But you you will.

Aimee Sher (12:35.309)
Aimee Sher (12:39.683)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (12:43.79)
yeah yeah yeah

Aimee Sher (12:56.078)
Yes. We will all have vision impairment in our life at some point.

Felicia Lo (13:05.579)
So already like right off the bat when I opened your pattern, I realized, yeah, I mean, it was inclusive just from the very beginning. Just the ease of the experience of using the pattern itself was already inclusive.

Aimee Sher (13:07.587)
Yeah.

Aimee Sher (13:14.67)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

So for our readers, this was the building blocks, sorry for our listeners, this is the building blocks drop, right? The drop shoulder pullover. That one is really interesting because it was so long, even in the main, like the non-large print layout, that the large print layout ended up being like 80 plus, maybe almost 100 pages. And when we were laying out, we were like, oh my gosh, this is gonna create friction because printing 80 pages is a lot.

Felicia Lo (13:23.787)
Yeah, building blocks.

Aimee Sher (13:49.07)
And since then, and back then I think I wrote out every row or wrote things in like two or four row repeats. And now I say things like work, blah, every fourth rows and then do every second row and then work other thing every second. I just do, I'm very pared down now almost like I'm writing for a magazine because of that friction of having to print out a large format pattern and then it's a million pages. So we really.

Felicia Lo (14:11.254)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (14:17.312)
It's really, that pattern really changed. It's still evolving. The accessibility is still evolving. That pattern really led me to think more about how to still get really lovely shaping because the shaping is gonna be so different from the 30 bust size to the 60 inch bust size. And I have to fit all of that into like say five pages of instructions. And it's just, it can get kind of grody. And it's really, it's still evolving all the time. I write.

Felicia Lo (14:29.495)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (14:42.505)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, like I think that when I got back into knitting, was reading Vogue magazine for patterns and things like that. you know, yeah, they're super, super short because they have so, they have limited printing space, right? You have to make it as small as possible. And so I think one of the first PDF patterns I ever bought was called Rogue. It was a hoodie and it was cabled and it was 13 pages or 20 pages or something. And at that time it was, what is this? But yeah.

Aimee Sher (14:51.444)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they're two pages. Mm-hmm. That's right. That's right. Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (15:06.454)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That feels so long at first. And it can be overwhelming. Like, some people love the 20-page patterns. They feel like they're being cared for and that I'm holding their hands through the whole thing. But then some people are like, no, this is too much. This is too much text. Closed tab. Closed tab. Like, I can't absorb all that text right now. So I think for different people who process differently, there has to be something for everybody.

Felicia Lo (15:25.047)
You

Felicia Lo (15:35.647)
Yeah, some kind of happy meeting. mean, we are looking a little bit at some Japanese patterns as well, and they're only done in schematic format. So just like, just follow the picture.

Aimee Sher (15:40.043)
I love them. That's right. I kind of really love those really old patterns that come on like the back, maybe even on like the inside of a yarn band that's like decreased 32 stitches over 18 rows. And you're just supposed to know like what rate, you're just supposed to work it out, which is amazing. And I really actually, that works for my brain, but I know that it's not what sucks.

Felicia Lo (15:51.254)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (15:56.784)
Go for it. Just do it.

Aimee Sher (16:07.054)
currently the standard in the industry.

Felicia Lo (16:09.279)
Yeah, it's a math skill that you'll need to like teaching kids how to do math. Learn how to do the number of decreases over the number of rows.

Aimee Sher (16:13.314)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a different skill. I think even back then, I think they only came in like one size or something, like all patterns were in a medium and then you're just supposed to figure it out.

Felicia Lo (16:26.331)
Yeah. So tell me about your sizing. I know you're saying that the top end goes all the way up to 60, but then what is the bottom end? How many sizes? Sorry, 66. How many sizes do you do across the entire range?

Aimee Sher (16:30.005)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (16:34.318)
66 now. Yeah.

So they come in four inch gaps, which sometimes creates problems that I'll talk about. But the lowest one is like the 28 to 32-ish range. And then it goes all the way up to 66 maximum. And the other thing about it is that as you go up the size range, the size charts that we typically use in knitting and also ASTM, which is the Fashion Industry Standard, they assume that your breasts get bigger. So.

Felicia Lo (16:52.556)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (17:09.134)
they assume that somebody at the lower end has no breast tissue and then someone at the higher end has like a ton of breast tissue, which you know, it's the average, these size measures are average of people, but then I realized that for an average, there's gonna be like approximately 49 % of people will be below that average for that measurement and 49 % of people will be above the average for that measurement, that's just how averages work. So my sizing, I realized very quickly early on that.

Having an inclusive size range is not going to be enough because when we pick sizes based on our full chest, that ignores everything that's happening up here. And because different people have different breast tissue amounts, you might end up with the, like if you're very busty, you're going to end up with some things that's falling off your shoulders. All these considerations that I started seeing in my testing, which I'm really grateful to my testers for that they're like really brave and will put themselves out there and show their, show their fit.

problems and fit successes that way. So then we started thinking about how to include people who have different shaping. And I think the primary thing that we've added is wider fronts than backs because people who have breasts have wider fronts than backs.

Felicia Lo (18:21.943)
Of Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (18:23.642)
And so, which I don't, yeah, I think one of the things that puzzled me about knitting, I was like, what do you mean the cast on is the same for the front and the back? yeah, yeah, it makes so sense. So yeah, since the building, I think building blocks is one of my last patterns that have a same front and back, and it's kind of oversized, so whatever. And then we started incorporating bust starts also because it really frustrated me because I felt at the time.

Felicia Lo (18:31.595)
Yeah, the front and the back are the same in all of the things that we make.

Aimee Sher (18:51.63)
that I was doing a good job grading and yet the front kept lifting. And that's just because in knitting we don't think about the starts, like pretty much ever. And I just, it was so new to me at the time and working with other designers, I decided to implement them and now I never design without them. So just little incremental changes throughout my short designing career means that I'm always trying different things to see how we can.

Felicia Lo (19:00.993)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (19:19.222)
make things work for different people. Right now we're working on a negative East tank top.

Which I feel like a lot of my test knitters have told me they don't like to make it because they don't know how to fit their busty Their bust in it with negative ease because they have more of it to fit into the negative ease So then it's really confusing and they're worried that it's gonna stretch out too much all these things So we're working on like that one has like a busty version the curvy version where the front is even wider with vertical bust stars and horizontal bust stars because when it's negative easy that much more fabric to stretch over it

Felicia Lo (19:53.335)
Mmm.

Aimee Sher (19:54.416)
So it's just really fun to try to improve on things that already exist. I wouldn't say any of my designs are horribly original or groundbreaking when it comes to the aesthetics, but I like to take things that I love to wear and see if I can finesse them a little bit more one at a time, one thing at a time, and that's kind of my approach to my pattern. Just really easy wearable things that have little fit adjustments here and there.

Felicia Lo (20:19.383)
Mm-hmm. So it's interesting, like to go from, you know, some of your designs before were like the building blocks design, they have a little bit more ease and they look really relaxed and comfortable and things like that. And now moving towards like this negative ease project. Are you seeing like in terms of knitting trends and fashion trends, are you seeing there's a move towards closer fitting kind of clothes?

Aimee Sher (20:25.566)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (20:45.07)
I don't know, but I feel like there's so many oversized, blocky sweaters on the market and that's been the trend pretty much since I started knitting that I became more interested in making accessible patterns that are on the Lower East Side. So I feel like lately I've been designing a lot of things that are just like five inches of ease max, something like that.

Felicia Lo (21:05.591)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (21:13.452)
and then going all the way down into negative E's. I don't know if the trends are going that way. I'm a little worried. Sometimes I worry that I will inadvertently sear somebody else's pattern into my brain and then write it as if it's my own. So I actually don't follow knitting designers anymore. Like I try really hard not to see other people's work so that I can.

Felicia Lo (21:19.147)
Yeah, I don't know, when I was...

Aimee Sher (21:38.316)
not be influenced by it and accidentally steal something from somebody, which I think is a thing that can happen. Like you see it in passing and then it just percolates in your brain.

Felicia Lo (21:46.487)
Mm hmm. Also, this is a great question. mean, like when where do you get your inspiration from at this point then?

Aimee Sher (21:52.398)
you

Usually the yarn talks to me. Like this relaxed heat behind me when I got the yarn. This was for the unwind retreat and I designed it for Labia and Amy's twist nouveau, which is like a non-superwash merino fingering weight.

yarn, I'm excited about because I love non-superwash yarn and I love speckles and sometimes those things don't get along. So it's very exciting to me to be able to work with this type of yarn. I really wanted it to be much more textured than it is. I don't know if it's visible here, but there's kind of, there's some pearl ridges throughout evenly spaced to give it a little bit of textural interest. But when I swatched, I swatched like...

Probably eight more textures that were all of them were more textured But then the one that spoke to me was this one simpler one. So oftentimes it's really the yarn metasides I decided I want to work with a yarn that looks interesting. I swatch it five billion different ways and then One speaks to me more than the others and then I built a whole garment around that then I had to decide the construction I had to decide shaping all that kind of things

Felicia Lo (22:54.422)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (23:02.092)
And it's really just the young tax to me.

Felicia Lo (23:02.133)
Yeah, we were talking about the yarn. Yeah. We were having this conversation at the studio actually recently because everybody is so different. Everybody's so individual. Everybody likes such different things. And so we're, you know, sometimes using the same yarn, but somebody will like it at a way looser gauge and it's more drapey and sloopy. And then somebody else is like, no, I actually like it really super firm. And then, you know, sometimes the firmness adds a different kind of structure to it. so there's...

Aimee Sher (23:16.823)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Mmm.

Aimee Sher (23:28.556)
Yes!

Felicia Lo (23:30.763)
there's definitely like so much individuality in terms of like what you like in your fabric and what you want that to feel like. Where do you sort of lie in all of that? Like are you looking for a more firm hand? Like things that are bit more, I don't know, drapey? Words like drapey?

Aimee Sher (23:33.92)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (23:48.504)
So because I don't design for myself, I design for my customers and primarily the people I want to make happy are my test knitters because they put in so much time. And if my test knitters happy, then my customers are happy. So because I design for other people, the fabric has to be structured enough so that when we're hanging 65 inches of fabric off of the shoulders, it's gonna hold up. So if I design this raglan sweater at anything,

bigger than the 24 stitches over 4 inches or 10 centimeters that I have it at right now. You're kind of standard fingerings, board weight, gauge. If I open it up all the way to 20, then we're going to have neckline issues in the larger sizes. It's going to pull open because there's not enough structure to hold it together. So I really lean on the side of like there needs to be enough structure so that it works across every size.

Felicia Lo (24:31.041)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (24:41.655)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's incredible. So like, I've just been thinking a lot about how you were talking about, you know, working with your test knitters and, know, for some of these larger sizes, it is a lot of knitting. It's a lot of investment of time. Um, I was in this room until midnight last night and I have my knitting machine next to me and I was working on these like last minute projects, of course. And I came downstairs at midnight and I told my husband, I'm like, I have just knit.

Aimee Sher (24:52.546)
Mm-hmm. It is. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (25:05.848)
Yeah.

Felicia Lo (25:12.459)
32,000 stitches in the past one hour. And it's a lot of knitting and it's a lot of fabric that's generated really quickly on the machine. But I cannot imagine, you know, trying to do that by hand. I was trying to calculate if I knit this by hand, how many hours would this have taken me, right? How do you?

Aimee Sher (25:13.484)
Yeah.

Aimee Sher (25:19.928)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (25:26.86)
I know.

Yeah, in my size, which is the second smallest size, my sweaters take me 40 to 60 hours. I time myself to make sure that I can make money, to make sure that this is viable as a job. It's depressing when you start timing yourself.

Felicia Lo (25:36.407)
Yeah.

Felicia Lo (25:46.241)
Yeah, so how do you work with your test knitters? you put out a call or do you have a pool of people you work with?

Aimee Sher (25:51.83)
I do put out a call. I am very lucky in that I feel that I've earned the trust of quite a few larger size test knitters who are willing to trust me on a lot of these things and spend all those hours making something that they feel that they can trust me to make fit for them. I calculated out all in the spreadsheet. I take the largest size and I add the largest bust starts yardage and I take all of that yardage and I divide it by 200.

And that's how many weeks that I give for the test so that you don't have to knit more than 200 yards per week in the largest size. So my smallest size testers get, they only have to knit like 50 yards a week. It ends up being like eight to 10 weeks for a tee or 10 to 14 weeks for a sweater.

Felicia Lo (26:29.035)
Hmm, okay. Yep.

Felicia Lo (26:36.097)
So it can be quite a bit of a process like...

Felicia Lo (26:45.943)
10 to 14 weeks for a sweater. So you really have to plan ahead with all of your pattern launches and everything. Fantastic. Fantastic. So there is one thing that I wanted to ask you about that, because you do mention on your website that you're a Taiwanese American knitter. Can you talk a little bit about your background? My family is also from Taiwan and they immigrated to Canada in the 70s.

Aimee Sher (26:51.138)
That's right, I'm in fall now. Yeah, I'm designing for the fall now.

Aimee Sher (27:00.963)
you

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (27:13.4)
You

Felicia Lo (27:14.929)
And then I was born here in Canada, but I'm always curious about sort of what your background might be like or how that's affected your designing and your knitting.

Aimee Sher (27:24.588)
Yes.

So I grew up in Taiwan and we kind of moved all over the place, but I went to school, elementary school in Gaoxiong, and that's kind of where most of my memories are. And then we immigrated here when I was in the start of fourth grade. So I was nine years old. later, recently I found out that my grandmother was a professional crochet designer for a factory of girls that made crochet garments.

Felicia Lo (27:53.815)
That's awesome.

Aimee Sher (27:54.134)
I did not know that and the craft skipped a generation, so that's interesting. And then I lived in Los Angeles from then until pretty recently, 2021. During the lockdown, I kind of went out of my mind and was like, I need more space. So I moved to the Midwest. So that's kind of how we ended up here.

Felicia Lo (28:13.771)
Fantastic. do you find that like, when did you learn to you learned in it when you were here in the US? Okay, okay. Do like have, what is your family ever does that anybody ever say anything about any of it?

Aimee Sher (28:21.752)
Yes, that's right.

Aimee Sher (28:33.014)
My in-laws are very impressed and my mother-in-law has, I promised her a hand-woven cashmere scarf two years ago and I still haven't started, but she loves and wears the things that I make for her. I made like an all-over cable sweater that took me two years. She was very supportive and she was like, I don't know if you're ever gonna finish, but I did eventually. So yeah, my family's very supportive. My kids, my oldest just learned to weave on a rigid heddle dome.

recently so that was really fun. Yeah, it's just kind part of our lives now. Like my kids go around picking bits of fiber off their clothes at end of the day because it attaches to themselves as they walk through the house.

Felicia Lo (29:17.579)
Yeah, that's fantastic. So do you feel like there's any part of your sort of background, your Taiwanese background that works its way into your designs at all or?

Aimee Sher (29:23.779)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (29:28.064)
I think so. In 2020, when I was losing my mind and really needed like a project, I purchased from Taobao in China, like eight patterns, like cardboard patterns that I then had to get shipped over for qipao, which is the traditional Chinese dress that we also wear in Taiwan.

And I was like, okay, I really wanna make this something that could have existed in the 1940s in Taiwan. And then I went up this rabbit hole. And it turns out we didn't make cotton in Taiwan. That wasn't a thing because the climate is too profitable for rice to the point where growing cotton would be actually less profitable than for the nuclear rice. So Taiwan became like a rice nation. So I went down this whole rabbit hole of different fibers and fabrics that could have existed back then.

all of this stuff. I never made it. I have the fabric, but I never made it. But it's just things like that. I take an interest in kind of how the identity and the craft intersects.

And I also bring kind of like a really practical Taiwanese perspective to a lot of my designing. I think a lot of people always tell me, I'm so glad that you haven't forgotten us in Florida and LA and you have so many great summer garments. And the reality is I grew up in Taiwan and it's really hot and humid there. So I do kind of design with like a global climate in mind.

Felicia Lo (30:50.646)
you

Felicia Lo (30:54.355)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fantastic. And like, obviously, like with materials and everything like that, right? Yeah. And then where you're living now, is it quite warm? Does it get quite warm?

Aimee Sher (30:59.278)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (31:04.94)
It gets so warm and humid. I don't wear knits between June and September at all, even summer knits. And then I wear my summer knits from like April, May and then like October-ish before I get into like the winter knits. So there's like a period where it just doesn't happen, but.

Felicia Lo (31:11.307)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (31:25.612)
And I think that's why I find it really fun to have a variety of textile arts, because then I can still utilize home goods that I've woven and things like that during that time and that kind of feeds my need to touch things that I made.

Felicia Lo (31:39.381)
Yeah, so that's the other thing that I was seeing that you're also spinning and you're also weaving. There's a big giant floor loom behind you in the video if you guys are watching the video version. yeah, it is. Yeah. What loom do you have back there?

Aimee Sher (31:45.536)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. And you too. I think you have my dream loom. Is that a spring?

I have a Harrisville, an old 40 inch eight shaft. Yeah, it's a workhorse. Yeah.

Felicia Lo (32:02.263)
It's lovely. Yeah, it's beautiful. And there's a project on there. Yeah, it looks great. So tell me like a little bit about all of the other crafts you do because I know you do sewing and then you do knitting. I mean, do you do crochet, you do spinning and you weave as well?

Aimee Sher (32:12.109)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (32:17.442)
This all happened at Stitches SoCal. So if our listeners remember, there used to be these huge events that they put on throughout the US. And they came to SoCal at the Pasadena Convention Center, which was like a skip and a hop away from my house. So I went because my favorite local yarn shop, Wool House, was also vending. So I went to take a look. And I got in trouble there because...

I think somebody was like, we're going to have a free workshop for drop spindle spinning, and it's going to be a 30 minute look into drop spindle spinning. I did that. then, oops, now I have $20 less and a student drop spindle and some fiber. And then I think I walked by the Greater LA Weaving Guild or something like that. And they were like, sit down and try it. And I sat down and threw a few picks, and I was like, this is really fun. But I can't start two crafts.

So then I got kind of really into spinning, but the weaving thing never left me and I kept thinking about it. And then as I advanced as a spinner and started accumulating huge quantities of hand spun yarn, I was like, okay, maybe it's time to learn a craft that will use up huge quantities of hand spun yarn. And I kept going back to the weaving. And I think this is a thing that a lot of weavers experience, which is that when they lure you in with the cute,

little project that's already been worked and you're sitting there weaving away. You're like, oh, this is so fun. I want to learn how to weave. And then you have to spend like 30 hours warping.

Felicia Lo (33:49.685)
Yeah, it's all part of the process, right?

Aimee Sher (33:50.318)
Yeah, so the part they don't tell you about in the cute boots where they're trying to lure you in is that there's significant planning involved. Yeah. Do you?

Felicia Lo (33:59.137)
Yeah, it's all part of the process. I found that I love all of those parts. know, like, I love it. I love the threading, the heddles. I love slaying the reed, like all that stuff. I love every part of it. So I'm okay. And then when you actually do sit down to weave, that weaving part takes like an hour or two. Yeah, it's almost done. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. But your handspun, do you find that like what you're learning about your handspun, does it like inform your knitting and you

Aimee Sher (34:06.766)
I

Aimee Sher (34:11.63)
It just flies right by. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Felicia Lo (34:28.96)
Yeah.

Aimee Sher (34:29.622)
Yeah, it really does. I'm actually developing a class called, like roughly the idea is like tips from a spinner, garment knitting tips from a spinner. That's all about yarn structure, fiber content, and how it impacts the things we wear and things like that. And I do find that spinning, and especially now that I've gotten into fleece processing, has totally changed the way I think about structure, like fabrics generally. I also recently took a class.

That was like a pre-recorded class with Spin-Off Magazine about twill structures. And now I'm like, my god, this is blowing my mind. Like the way that twill structures change the fabric in Broken Twill is different from regular twill. And now that's really gotten me thinking more about different stitch structures in knitting and how they interact with the yarn structure and construction. And all of these things are kind of percolating in my mind all the time.

Felicia Lo (35:21.463)
Do you ever think about like designing for handspun or designing weaving projects in addition to designing knitting projects? It was too much.

Aimee Sher (35:29.474)
would love to design weaving projects. I've actually got a self-designed project using Harrisville Shetland right now for my first wearable and it's gonna be a coat. Very excited about that and it is cool. But I don't know if I'll ever get into it professionally. I might throw the draft for this just on my website and people can use it if they want, but I'm not a profeci- I'm not really that proficient a weaver. I'm still in the first three years or so and I feel like weaving is like a lifelong.

Felicia Lo (35:48.876)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (35:59.896)
There are people with weaving knowledge that I can never hope to comprehend. It's a really vast craft. And I learned a lot from you too. I watch all of your weaving videos on YouTube. All of them. yeah, I really want a Design for Hands button. I think we have like a shawl, like an anything shawl. Choose your own adventure shawl pattern.

we're kind of thinking about. I don't know if we're going to get to it this year, but it's kind of a shawl in two or three different gauges with a bunch of different stitch patterns available to you. Because you know, those tiny shells are all the rage right now. And there's a $5 pattern for every single one. I was literally like, you could just change the stitch pattern or use a hands bun yarn and that'll change the fabric.

Felicia Lo (36:50.487)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (36:52.906)
significantly so we want to explore that and see if we can do one for creative folks who really want to like make their own thing and kind of a choose your own adventure format kind of like the app building block series that we did is kind of a choose your own venture with all the different multiple views so yeah I think I think I'd like to design for handspun theoretically a good pattern would work for all yarns

Felicia Lo (37:09.473)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (37:19.778)
But my heart is with woolen spun yarns. And recently I watched a video where you said you mostly did worsted and you had not spun much from a roll-like before and I was like, because I'm the opposite. Yeah.

Felicia Lo (37:22.615)
No

Felicia Lo (37:27.052)
Yeah.

Felicia Lo (37:32.171)
Really? Yeah, have to, I need to get more confident with the whole, the woolen look of the yarn is what stresses me out. Things that look fuzzy and like not tidy, that I think that this is part of what draws me to weaving. It's like literally the act of, putting those, like those yarns, the warp yarns, putting them in order, making everything straight and clean and tidy and all of that.

Aimee Sher (37:40.174)
Mmm.

Aimee Sher (37:49.986)
the square, the square beating, yeah.

Yes, yes, everything is square, yeah.

Felicia Lo (38:01.493)
I love it. And so when I'm making woolen yarn and the woolen yarn is like kind of unruly, I'm like, lock it down.

Aimee Sher (38:08.077)
Mmm.

I'm really learning in fleece prep that it's all in the prep. Like when I spin from like a commercial bat that's like a piece fleece makes bats, huge bats that they spin from and then they also sell the bats. But because they're being spun on industrial machines, nobody has to cope with the fact that it's full of bumps and VM and it's buying, it all works out in the spin. But when I spin it, I get extremely stressed out.

Felicia Lo (38:29.815)
Mm-hmm.

Felicia Lo (38:34.923)
Yeah.

Aimee Sher (38:35.16)
This is very lumpy, I can't get it even, and there's a lot of VM, and I just, but then I realize if I'm hand carding it, and I really prep it really well, and I put only two locks of fleece on that thing, everything is perfectly smooth, and I roll it up neatly, it's a beautiful, consistent, even, woolen spun spin. So even within woolen spun, there's like this huge.

Felicia Lo (38:39.371)
you

Aimee Sher (38:59.508)
And I'm not saying the former is bad, it's just different and I gravitate towards more of the consistent even. It's still, you know, it's still woolen, very much so, but it... Yeah, I don't know. It's consistent woolen.

Felicia Lo (38:59.723)
Yes.

Felicia Lo (39:13.075)
It's consistent, Woollen. Yeah, I'm learning. have a girl on our team, Greta, who is very, very, very into fiber prep. And I've learned so much just watching her and been really inspired about like seeing all the different ways that you can prepare fiber and how you can make it really smooth and consistent if you want to. And I think that in the past, I was just like, maybe I was very rough with all of my fiber prep and like everything is lumpy and not consistent. I want it smooth.

Aimee Sher (39:29.676)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Aimee Sher (39:38.198)
I discovered I was overloading my hand cards. Yeah, I did like a sample test, like a fleece study where I spun it every which way. I loaded up the hand carder. I didn't load up the hand carder. And I noticed that it was a very different spinning experience. Just how much I put on the hand carder makes a huge difference. The things you learn. Yeah.

Felicia Lo (39:41.206)
Mmm.

Felicia Lo (39:59.819)
Yeah. So, I mean, it's so much to learn, but you learn by spending time doing it. I mean, between your knitting and then your designing for your people, and then writing your patterns with your team, you operate an online shop as well. And you're weaving and you're sewing and you're spinning and you're fiber prepping. How are you balancing out all of your time for all of these things?

Aimee Sher (40:10.92)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (40:17.27)
Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (40:24.778)
I don't. I haven't woven a pick on this in a month. It's eight yards of fabric and I should have been done months ago and I just don't. Lately I'm finding that because of all the things we talked about, because learning about weave structures, because learning about fiber prep and spinning informs my design practice also, I've started to really set time aside, like business time, work time aside to do all these things.

to further my craft. I think those things matter. I think they're an advantage for me in business also, just from like a purely capitalistic perspective, like aside from the fact that I love it and I want to spend all my time doing it. From a business perspective also, I think I can sell things because I know about them and can tell my users why they make my heart sing. And I think that matters too. That authenticity of like, I actually do love.

talking about the things that I sell. So all of that factors into it and it does mean that I have to outsource a significant amount of my knitting now. So a lot of my samples are being sent out to sample knitters so that I can do this.

Felicia Lo (41:34.985)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's so tricky to balance all of the things. You can't do all of the things. You can't do all of the things.

Aimee Sher (41:41.216)
I know you know, yeah. I know you also have the same. I'm sure you have the same. You'd run a whole online school and everything, so you're, you know. Being a business owner necessarily means that we make sacrifices in doing the things we actually wanna be doing in our craft, and then it turns into kind of like a push. There's a tension there of when is it working, when is it craft?

Felicia Lo (41:50.775)
Yeah.

Felicia Lo (42:06.667)
Yeah, yeah, we have this conversation all the time. is this you're doing it because you love to do it or is it because this is actually work? I'm like, but it's the same. And it's sometimes hard to make that argument because then, I mean, yeah. When does it work and when are you playing?

Aimee Sher (42:17.304)
Sometimes, sometimes the same.

Aimee Sher (42:23.628)
Well, sometimes I'm sitting here, sometimes I'm sitting here printing off labels when I'd rather be weaving. You know, it just, some days it's hard, but most days I feel really lucky that when inspiration hits, I can leave my desk and go weave a little bit or spin a little bit. And I do try to make sure I have at least like an hour of, I guess they call it executive time in the business world where I get to just play per day.

Felicia Lo (42:31.231)
Yeah. Yeah.

Felicia Lo (42:49.799)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think about like reading week where you just, you know, you just immerse yourself in the thing that you are going to learn and grow from and you don't realize how much you're going to, you know, develop from just spending that time on what you're doing.

Aimee Sher (42:54.894)
Yeah.

Yes.

Aimee Sher (43:05.804)
And sometimes it might be nothing. Sometimes I read entire books and I'm like, I don't think this impacted my work at all. And sometimes it's like, my gosh, this changes everything that I know about everything. So you never know if the investment pays off, but you have to do it.

Felicia Lo (43:11.422)
Hahaha

Felicia Lo (43:20.383)
Yeah. So what are you working on now? Like what can people look forward to seeing from you next?

Aimee Sher (43:26.318)
We are working, we just added spindles and spinning fibers to the shop and we're very excited about that. I have behind me a t-shirt called the Relax Tee. Might be my favorite thing that I've ever designed even though it's very simple. I'm gonna steal the simple like right after release and just wear forever. Yeah, we have lots of fun patterns and...

different crafts and we also carry rigid heddle looms now which my kid is thrilled about because she she likes to weave she never took to knitting she loves to weave so yeah everywhere as at amyshermakes.com it's a i e e s h e r makes or at amyshermakes and then my website is amyshermakes.com yeah so that's everywhere you can find me

Felicia Lo (44:09.696)
Mm-hmm.

Fantastic. And so if somebody is wanting to come to your sort of knitting designs, your sort of collection of knitting designs, is there one design of yours that you kind of recommend as an entry point for somebody who's wanted to try your pattern for the first time?

Aimee Sher (44:18.424)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aimee Sher (44:27.162)
my goodness, I am a particular fan of Campus Vest, which nobody has heard of. It didn't do that well. But it is a bottom up single piece vest with a V-neck. And it kind of has all the things that I think are interesting for my pattern, the wider front, the gorgeous underarm curve shaping and bust starts, all of those things, but there's very little of it.

because it's a vest, it's a cardigan vest. So you can really explore all of those things in a small format and it's a cool one.

Felicia Lo (44:53.495)
with them.

Felicia Lo (44:58.529)
Fantastic, fantastic. So people can look for you on Instagram, on your website, amyshormakes.com, and then also you're on YouTube as well so they can find you there. And Ravelry. Yeah, everywhere. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with me today, Amy. Thank you.

Aimee Sher (45:01.358)
And Ravelry, yep. my gosh, all the places. The nature of our job. The nature of our job. Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me. I feel like I could spend another two hours talking to you about weaving alone, but we'll leave it there for now. Thank you so much. I'd love to do a weaving one where I just ask you a thousand questions. Thank you so much. I hope you have a good day.

Felicia Lo (45:21.207)
Yes. We'll do another one. We'll talk about weaving next time.

my god.

Felicia Lo (45:33.941)
You too, thank you.