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Episode 47: Gary Boston
72 Plays11 months ago
This month I talk with Gary Boston, another avid Aids Lifecycle supporter and budding knit designer. Here about his Aids Lifecycle and design journey.
Gary's Designs on Ravelry
Gary's Ravelry Group, KAL's and CAL's are run here
Gary's Instagram: @gary_knits_gary_rides
@Destash4Good
My AIDS/Lifecycle Page
End AIDS KAL/CAL FAQ
AIDS/Lifecyle Homepage
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Craft, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to Craft, Design, Edit, Sleep, Repeat. I'm your host, Lisa Conway. Welcome to my world where we try to understand the business of knit and crochet design.
Gary Boston's Journey into Design
00:00:38
Speaker
Okay, welcome back, everybody. Today, I'm thrilled to be talking with Gary Boston. He is another AIDS lifecycle writer that I have known for what, two, three years now? Yep, a couple years. Yeah, a couple years. And he just in the last six months or so has put his finger into the pot of designing. So I'm really excited to be working with him on that as well. So welcome, Gary.
00:01:07
Speaker
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Well, let's start off by telling people your knitting story. How long have you been knitting? How did you learn to knit? I've been knitting for just under 20 years. So I grew up in a crafty family, so there were always sort of arts and crafts on the periphery.
00:01:36
Speaker
Grandmother was a knitter. My mom was a quilter. But when we were kids, I think more than anything, just to keep us occupied when we would be visiting my grandma or whatever during the summer, she would have us do arts and crafts.
00:01:55
Speaker
got started probably the first thing I think was with her, we did macrame, like so this is back in the 70s. And although macrame seems to be having a renaissance right now, but we did you know, we did wall hangings and the hanging pot holders and things like that. And then from there kind of moved into needlepoint on plastic canvas and kind of cross stitch and things like that. And so I did all that when I was a kid. And then as
Knitting as a Hobby and Skill
00:02:21
Speaker
I
00:02:21
Speaker
got older, that sort of felt the wayside and nothing really happened until I was well into adulthood. And I was trying to find something that my partner at the time was really into watching TV in the evenings and especially watching like football games on the weekends. I was not. And I wanted to do
00:02:47
Speaker
that I could be in the same room as if we could spend time together, but that I was feeling like I was actually doing something productive and not just vegetating on the couch and watching television. And for whatever reason, a friend was visiting us who crocheted. And I was like, oh, hmm, maybe that's something I could try. Taught me the basic stitch. I made a square and decided that that would work. And then started looking into things to crochet. And every time I would see something, I was like, oh, that looks great.
00:03:16
Speaker
it would be a knitting pattern. And so I said, well, the things that I seem to want to be gravitating towards making are knitting, so I should probably do this. So this is, you know, 2004, 2005, so before YouTube, before Ravelry. But I went to my local yarn store, I actually, most of what I learned was through books, I remember the,
00:03:43
Speaker
Debbie Stoller, Stitch and Bitch book, which was one of the ones that I, one of the ones that I opened. I think the Elizabeth Zimmerman, Knitting Without Tears or knitting, I think it's called Knitting Without Tears. Yeah, there's one Knitting Without Tears. I can't remember, I remember Knitting Without Tears, Knitting in Plain English and I can't remember who the author of that is. That's Maggie Righetti. Yes.
00:04:08
Speaker
So both all of those sort of found their way to me and I kind of learned the basics that way. My grandmother was still was still living and I remember going home once and she helped me out with some certain things. She taught me the backward loop cast on because I think at that point probably I was still just knitting my cast on and so she showed me that and gave me a bunch of her old supplies and stuff like that.
00:04:33
Speaker
It was really books. I took a lesson at a local yard store in New York City where I was living at the time. But that was that was it. I wish I had had YouTube to to teach me. Well, honey, mine goes way back further than that, let me tell you. And so far back that what was I doing? I think it was
00:05:00
Speaker
Oh, it was weaving the yarn, the ends in at the end of a project. And my mother was like, well, don't you just do those as you go? You know, cause she taught me to, to knit it in, right? You, you connected the two and then you just knit it. But that's always bulkier, right? And I said, well, um, techniques have come a long way since the sixties mom. Right.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I mean, it's true because I remember, you know, an Afghan, I think my mom had been knitting when she was pregnant with my sister. And, you know, it was all done in these strips and then they seemed each one together. And I was looking at something else and, you know, they didn't have these like super long circular needles that they could knit on. So everything was seamed up. And I was like, oh, thank goodness I learned
00:05:56
Speaker
when I did when we had all these new, you know, newer tools to work with. Circular needles were fairly new about. When I hit high school, so in the 70s, that that's and and they were really awful plastic cords. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. I bought.
00:06:24
Speaker
My sister still has them and we always tease her about them. But the first set of interchangeable needles I had were called Denise interchangeable needles. And they were these plastic tubes. I still have a set. And then you put the little tips into them. But yeah. I wore those out. Those were actually available in the early 70s. OK. No.
00:06:53
Speaker
late seventies, early eighties, because I had my first set of those. I was maybe 20 to 22 ish somewhere in that region when I got my first and boy had a set, um, that was metal tips.
00:07:14
Speaker
Oh, okay. That was more extensive than the Denise needles, but they were very expensive. Right. Right. Um, I think you can still buy the boy set. I know you can still buy the Denise ones, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the boy set around still, but, um, yeah, needles have come a long way. No, that was, that was definitely a,
00:07:42
Speaker
a game changer when I got the interchangeable needle. Because most of what I had learned on, I had one little clover bamboo set, but a lot of what I had in the very beginning were my grandma's old brushed aluminum, the multicolored ones, and that's how I did most of my knitting. Oh, I still have a whole bunch of those. I've seen someone who makes really cool jewelry out of them, so they take
00:08:09
Speaker
They've taken, you can send them to them and they cut them up and bend them and turn them into really cool jewelry, which I think is a great reason. Yeah, I've seen some really cool bracelets made out of them and things like that, yeah. So what made you decide to dip your toe into designing?
Entering the Knit Stars Pro-Am Competition
00:08:25
Speaker
Tell me about that. Well, it was very stumbled into it more than decided. I had, and I'm sure we'll get into this, you mentioned
00:08:38
Speaker
a life cycle upfront, but through some of the fundraising things that I do in the knitting community, I had gotten invited to speak on, um, knit stars. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with has this, their, their sort of new program is a subscription thing called the Yarniverse. And part of that program, they have weekly, I think weekly zoom calls with all of the Yarniverse members, and they have a,
00:09:08
Speaker
a program I think called Rising Stars. And they bring in different people to talk about different things. But somehow someone pitched me as someone to speak to the group about kind of what I do in the knitting world around the fundraising. And it was an interview very much like this. There's some fun in games that they do in the hour or so that we have. But one of the things was Shelly Brander, who's the CEO of Knit Stars, does sort of a little
00:09:38
Speaker
interview and she asked, Have you ever thought about designing? And I said, Oh, you know, it's interesting you say that this is going to be my final year doing the ride, I'm going to have a lot more free time on my hand. And it is something that I've thought about. And from that, she was like, Well, you know, I've had this idea. And I'd love to figure out a way to tie it into your fundraising. But I have this idea for like a
00:10:04
Speaker
design competition where we take a professional designer and pair them up with someone who's just getting started in design and put them up, put them on teams with each other and they compete and come up with a design. And, you know, maybe there's some way we could turn this into a fundraiser for your, for your bike ride. And so from that launched this knit stars pro-am competition that
00:10:33
Speaker
started, it was this past fall where they teamed me up with Louis Boria of Brooklyn Boy Knits. There was another team, Melinda Lesko and Nina Macklin Dayton, and we were all given the same yarn. I think part of the thing was that Knits stars also had a large amount of yarn that they wanted to utilize.
00:10:56
Speaker
But we all had, we had sort of unlimited quantity, quantity of this, this particular yarn. And that was the only real restriction, except for a time restriction that we had to come up with a design. So that it was probably a year faster than I had ever imagined that I would start to dip my toe into design. But it was a really fun project. And it was one of those things that, you know, when it comes across your plate, you can't say no, because when you're when
00:11:23
Speaker
When else are you going to have the opportunity to have like sort of a professional mentor on the design side to sort of help you through the very steep learning curve of like, how do you even write a pattern and things like that? And also to have it as sort of a fundraiser for what I was doing. So it was a great experience, but it was a little faster than I ever would have thought I would have gotten involved in design. And has it...
00:11:51
Speaker
triggered the desire to do more? I mean, did it help support that idea and make it like, yeah, this is something I really do want to do or? It definitely sparked something. I did not even have, I mean, I had one teeny tiny little pocket sized stitch dictionary that I'd had for years and years and I don't know that I had ever actually
00:12:19
Speaker
done anything with it. But as soon as we had the first meeting where she's like, okay, you and Louis want to work together, and we'll send you the yarn. Before I even had the yarn, I was down in my local library. I was checking out every stitch dictionary thing. I had so much fun
00:12:40
Speaker
doing that process of it of just sort of like, Ooh, I like this stitch. And then, you know, I hadn't before Lewis and I had even had our first meeting. Like I had an idea of like what I wanted to do. It's not what we ended up with doing it at all, but we did use that one stitch that I had fallen in love with. And from there, just sort of like how to think about, okay, if we want to combine several different stitches, what do I need to think about in terms of the stitch multiples and how things are going to line up. And, you know, even though you have, you know,
00:13:10
Speaker
some really beautiful stitches. When you put them all together, it just looks like a hot mess. It doesn't cohere in any sort of way. And so that whole process of just the swatching and playing around with different stitches and tweaking them to kind of take a stitch from this dictionary, but like, okay, we're going to make it shorter so that it fits in the dimension we want. That whole thing, that whole part of the process was really, really fun.
00:13:36
Speaker
Um, and so that definitely sparked a something in me that I was like, Ooh, I want to spend more time doing, doing stuff like this. So, and this is, you know, someone who, um, only swatches because he knows it's the right thing to do when you're, when you're doing something, not because there's any joy in my life from, from swatching, but this actually, I was like, Ooh, this is actually fun. You know, and, and I don't have to, it doesn't have to go anywhere. It doesn't really have to, you know, end up anywhere.
00:14:03
Speaker
It can just be exploration for its own sake right now in the process. I mean, we did have a time constraint and we had to come up with a product. So there was a little bit, that was the less fun part of it was the time crunch, but.
00:14:16
Speaker
Well, as you get into designing and you start setting your own deadlines though, you've had a good experience from knowing that you can't just take forever. If you want to produce, you're going to have to set yourself deadlines. So that was a good first experience. Um, I think that was my biggest problem is I released the first one and then never really set the goals and the timelines and the deadlines for myself to do more.
00:14:46
Speaker
Right. Right. So this year, that's been a big change for me because I've said, OK, I want to make sure I release at least six patterns. Mm hmm. And I know that I'm going to do this sweater and I know I'm going to do this sweater. But what can I fill in with in between? Right. So that while those long test knits are going on and things like that, I'm still working on other stuff. Right. Yeah. Just sort of building that pipeline. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
yeah, and it's, it's a different way of thinking about it than I had in the past. So it's, but yes, the, the, the playing with stitch patterns and techniques can be like, because, okay, you've got this great stitch pattern, but your standard bind dot doesn't really work with it.
00:15:35
Speaker
Right. Right. Right. So how do I what bind off is going to really work with this? What cast on is really going to work with us? Those kinds of things. And just sitting and playing and figuring that out can be a lot of fun. And let me tell you, playing in charting software, playing in stitch mastery.
00:15:59
Speaker
can be so fun i i can lose hours hours wow i didn't i didn't even know i didn't i mean i assumed that there was in fact i i think on one of your prior interviews you they talked you talked with the designer about about the program and i was like oh wow there are
00:16:19
Speaker
stitch pattern programs, which I had no idea. Listen to my tech episode. I'd have to look up the number. I'll make sure I look up the number for you. And then my tech revisited from the beginning of this year because I talk about online tools as well as the software and the benefits and the pros and cons of each. So yeah, that will help.
00:16:47
Speaker
But Stitch Mastery is the standard right now, and it's very, very, very well supported. I've had two issues just in the last few months, and she has been incredibly... My computer is... I'm using my hands, people, and my computer just did confetti.
00:17:13
Speaker
Nobody can see that, but me and Gary. She was incredibly supportive and very, very responsive. It's a worthwhile piece of software to invest in. Yeah, I'm excited to start playing around with things as I dig deeper into this thing and seeing what's out there.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So you said that was tied into your fundraising. Yes.
Fundraising through Knit Stars for AIDS Life Cycle
00:17:44
Speaker
How did you tie that into the fundraising? Go into that and start telling us a little bit more about your fundraising, too. Sure. On the NISTARS Pro-Am, what they decided to do was
00:18:02
Speaker
We put, once we had come up with the designs, we put all of the, both of the designs. So Louis and I came up with a scarf pattern and Nina and Melinda came up with a shawl pattern. So we didn't know what each other were working on until,
00:18:17
Speaker
the very end, and they put them all together. And what they did is they put it all together into one pack, and then they sold that. And so 100% of those pattern sales for like a six week period went to my fundraising. And then Knit Stars was also incredibly generous. And
00:18:37
Speaker
20% of the, if you bought the yarn, that particular yarn that we had been using, they donated 20% of those proceeds over that same period of time to my fundraising for AIDS Life Cycle. Awesome. Yeah. They haven't announced yet how much we raised, but it was a really, really nice donation. It was really a great boost to my fundraising this year.
00:19:04
Speaker
The reason they had wanted to, I think Shelly had gotten attracted to the thing was, as I said, this is going to be my last year, at least for a while, of doing the ride. When I started the ride back in 2019, I set a goal for myself to, I don't know why it came into my head, but I said,
00:19:30
Speaker
I'd had a longer history with these bike riders, if we could talk about it a little bit later, but I'd said, oh, I'd forgotten how much fun this was. I want to raise $200,000 and I'll give myself 10 years to do it. And luckily it did not take 10 years.
00:19:45
Speaker
because my legs are saying, you know, that was probably, you know, a check your legs couldn't cash. But so this year, this year looked like it was going to be the year that I hit my $200,000. And I basically, from what I raised last year to what I needed to raise this year, there was about a $7,000, $8,000 gap. And so that's that was going to be a big chunk of bridging that gap. So so it was a great, a great help.
00:20:14
Speaker
Lovely. Okay. So we'll come back to your riding and choosing not to ride anymore, but let's tell people more about AIDS life cycle. They heard some from Ellie last month, but now they're going to hear from you. Tell us about AIDS life cycle and your connection to them. Sure.
Purpose and Impact of the AIDS Life Cycle Ride
00:20:34
Speaker
So AIDS Life Cycle is a 7-day, 545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles that is the major fundraiser for both the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. So those two agencies
00:20:55
Speaker
are the beneficiaries for the ride. It's been going on for 30 years. It started back in 1994. At that point, it was called the California AIDS Ride. And I got involved in 2019. A good friend of mine had joined the board of San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Back
00:21:21
Speaker
backtrack to 1996 or so. California age ride had started in 94. The next year there was a ride from Boston to New York that was started called Boston to New York. Excuse me, age ride. In 1996, 97, I did that ride. I was living in New York at the time. A woman I worked with
00:21:43
Speaker
was like, you know, it was like the third year that they had done the ride, I think. And she said, you know, I saw them riding down Sixth Avenue this last year. Was that something you'd ever want to do? And I said, yes.
00:21:55
Speaker
So we did that ride. I ended up doing the Boston, New York ride three times as a rider, once as a roadie. I did two rides across Texas. And then in 1999, I did the Alaska AIDS vaccine ride, which was the last ride I did.
00:22:14
Speaker
brutal week of writing where the weather was not at all cooperative. It sleeted, it snowed, it rained almost every single day. What month did you guys do that in? I think it was either end of August or early September. I think they wanted to push it. It was the first year they did it. They ended up doing it twice. It was the first year they did it, and they tried to figure out a time where the weather was supposed to be
00:22:40
Speaker
the best chance of good weather. And there was just this freak snowstorm day two that left a, I mean, I think there were probably like 700 riders or so on that ride. It was a relatively small ride, but like half of them got stuck at like this, at a pit stop. They had to call in like either like the state guard or the national guard with like trucks to like bus a bunch of people into camp. I wrote it, I wrote on it into camp, but we were just unprepared. Like, you know, we had all,
00:23:10
Speaker
brought rain gear and things like that, but not like sleeting snow gear. And so we had like mylar blankets like wrapped around our feet and like stuff shoved in our shoes. OK, the only month you could attempt anything like that is the end of June through the middle of July. Hmm. I don't think it was I think it was I think it was like that. Anyone doing it any other time of year was was not thinking Alaska weather. Right.
00:23:37
Speaker
I think the next year, I think it was beautiful. The next year, whenever, maybe they moved it up, but that ride.
00:23:44
Speaker
did it for me. I came home, this was in 1999, came home, put my bike in the storage bin. I was living in New York at the time, put it in the storage bin and did not touch that bike for 20 years. Oh, wow. Until I moved out here. And that's when my girlfriend who joined the board, she was like, oh, all the board members, she wasn't a cyclist. She's like, all the board members do the ride once. And she's like, so I feel like I have to do it. I remember you used to do these rides back in the day.
00:24:13
Speaker
be interested in doing it. I was like, I moved out to California, had a lot more free time. And I was like, yeah, I'll do that with you. And then after that first year, I forgot how much I had enjoyed both the training and the fundraising aspect. And that's where I got this
00:24:29
Speaker
wild idea was like, Oh, I'll do it 10 more times and you know, raise $200,000. So that's kind of how my history with the the ride has happened. And so it's this will be my sixth sixth year of doing it out here. And it's been it's been amazing. I mean, it's been it's it's a really, really fantastic event. The
00:24:51
Speaker
We call it the love bubble, the seven days that we spend on the road together. There's 2,500 to 3,000 riders and probably another 750 to 1,000 crew members. And it's just this wonderful community where everybody, it's a hard event, it's like everyone's working really hard, the hours are long, but everyone's just, sole goal is to get ourselves down the coast from San Francisco to LA safely. And so there's just a lot of,
00:25:21
Speaker
kindness and love and things that you don't necessarily experience in your everyday life at that scale. It's a really fantastic event and raises a lot of money. I think that it's been a struggle the last couple of years post COVID, I think, to raise as much money as we did right before.
00:25:40
Speaker
I think the peak year was the year right before COVID where they raised like $17 million that year. And so I think it's been down a bit since then, but it still raises a substantial amount of money each year for the two organizations. You were talking about the scale and for some reason it never dawned on me that that many people would be participating in writing in that kind of an event.
00:26:10
Speaker
That's huge. It's massive. It's like this little city that and the logistics involved are
00:26:18
Speaker
mind-blowing. They've been doing it for 30 years, so they've got it pretty well down to a fine oiled machine. The route has stayed roughly the same. There's always some traffic issues that you need to work around. But the stops at night are in the same places, and so they've kind of got it down. But it's a fleet of 20 probably Penske trucks that are just for the tents and our gear.
00:26:49
Speaker
doctors, masseuses, acupuncturists, physical therapists, bike mechanics. It's a big, big operation. And it's really impressive that they're able to pull it off every year with
00:27:04
Speaker
Um, you know, cause you have to deal with, luckily in California, the weather's not like it is, you know, not as unpredictable as it is in Alaska, but you know, last year, last year we had, um, it was the coldest ride that I've had to do. And we had one day where it was just brutal rain. And again, you know, people weren't.
00:27:22
Speaker
necessarily prepared for it. And so they have to be, you know, they have a fleet of like Greyhound type buses where, you know, they can go and pick up people at pit stops as they need to and get them into camp, get them into camp every night. But it's a huge undertaking. But it's also just amazing to see because it's just this
00:27:42
Speaker
you know, mass of cyclists, like all right, you know, all right. Yeah. And when when we do all the stuff, there's, you know, a couple of places along the route where there's a fried artichoke stand in the middle of the Central Valley of California, where everybody stops to get fried artichokes. It's just like, you know, all of a sudden, there's just like this sea of like, you know, cyclists like stop on the side of eating fried artichokes. So it's a pretty impressive site. It is.
00:28:09
Speaker
Oh, I can imagine, I can imagine that the, just the picture of it in my head of that many people going down the road on bicycles. It's just, sounds amazing. I don't know if Ellie told you about Red Dress Day, but on the fifth day of the ride, everybody dresses in red dresses or red costumes of some sort. And so it's just this, you know,
00:28:36
Speaker
We see a sea of red winding up and we go through like Vandenberg Air Force Air Force Base or Space Force Base now, but Vandenberg Air Force Base and they, you know, at this point they know what's what's happening with everyone. Anyone who is out on the road on that day and has not seen it before must be thinking what is going on.
00:28:59
Speaker
That would be a sight to see. That would definitely be a sight to see. I know that a lot of your fundraising has been around the knit-along. Will you be continuing that after you stop writing?
Creating Community through Knit-Alongs
00:29:14
Speaker
I think in some form or another I will do some of that. So the knit-alongs started after
00:29:24
Speaker
After my second or third ride, I'd sort of done the whole like raising money through friends and family and I was like, okay, they're gonna start to get a little tired every year of me hitting them up for money. And I had gotten much more involved in knitting and my knitting had sort of taken off and I was meeting designers and meeting dyers and things like that. And I was like, there's gotta be a way to combine
00:29:53
Speaker
these two things that I love. And I just had this idea. I was like, you know, people like these night like nittelongs. Why couldn't we do a nittelong as a fundraiser? And my idea was just to do one. And then I put out a
00:30:10
Speaker
thing on Instagram, basically like, here's the crazy idea, would any designer be interested in like doing a pattern for a knit along as a fundraiser? It got picked up by a couple of people who shared it and like overnight I had 20 or 30 designers raise their hand and said, oh yeah, I'd happily give you a pattern to, through that process, one of the ones, a woman that I'd,
00:30:36
Speaker
had reached out, Evan Bail O'Keefe, and she's in Ireland, she's American but living in Ireland, and she said, you're thinking too small. You don't do just one of these, do like a whole series of them.
00:30:54
Speaker
you know, part of the growth in the fundraising in the knitting community has just me not being wise enough to say no ever to anything. I was just I was like, Sure, let's do let's do four of the we'll do every quarter. And then someone was like, Well, why don't you add a crochet along? I was like, Sure, let's do crochet. So, so that's how it got started. It was just going to be one. And then
00:31:20
Speaker
we decided to do four of them for them a year. And so that's been going on for the, this is the third season of doing sort of four knit alongs and crochet alongs. And sometimes we add a sock in there because a sock designer says, oh, I have this new sock pattern. Do you want to use it? And I'm like, sure, let's, you know, let's add socks. And so the, we pair a designer up with a dyer usually, and we sell yarn kits. And it's been very important for me to make it work
00:31:47
Speaker
in whatever way works best for their business. So if it's an existing design that they already have established pricing on and they don't want to mess around with that, I never want the fundraising piece of it to come out of the dyer's pocket. I want it to come out of the participant's pocket. So we'll just charge an entry fee. So we do an entry ticket and then you buy the pattern separately. Sometimes it's a new pattern and there's
00:32:12
Speaker
the designer will say, yeah, I'll tack on, you know, three or $4 to that pattern price for X period of time. And that'll be the donation to the ride. Similarly with the dyers, it's a little, you know, easier, I think, on that end to say like, we'll just add a dollar to a skein. And that'll be the donation. I've never had anyone
00:32:35
Speaker
not get it in terms of the ultimate consumer saying like, I get this as a fundraiser. And yes, yarn, which is normally $30 is going to be $30 because two of that's going to go to you. So it's just kind of been, it's a little different each time. And but it's been a ton of fun. It's built, you know, we have a really great community of people who participate. And it's allowed me to meet a ton of designers and work with them and dyers as well. So that's been a really fun, a fun thing. But I do think
00:33:05
Speaker
I will not do four of them a year. In addition to this year feeling like my body doesn't want to do the bike riding anymore. Part of me is like, I want to knit on something that's not a knit along. I want to knit something for my, just do some of my own knitting. But I do think that
00:33:23
Speaker
doing a couple of them a year. I would like to continue to support AIDS Life Cycle, even if I'm not a rider. So maybe we'll do one in the spring heading into the bike ride and raise a little money for that. They just started, which I think is a brilliant idea that AIDS Life Cycle this year started kind of like a scholarship fund and it's for first time riders. So all riders have to raise a minimum of $3,500 to participate. But
00:33:53
Speaker
When it's your first year doing it, that can seem like life. That can be tough. It can be a tough, I remember my first ride back in the 90s, this was before everything was done online, but we would show up to the first day, day zero of the ride for orientation, and you had a pile of checks, and people would be at the check-in line,
00:34:15
Speaker
you know, bartering, like, okay, like, I'm $100 short, well, I'm like, well, here, you could take one of my $100 donations and sort of like, working it out that way. And so they, the ride this year started this sort of scholarship fund. So I think that would be a cool thing to do is to, to do a fundraiser and have that just all go to the scholarship fund. So I'll continue to do that. And a couple of other organizations that I've gotten involved in, Knit the Rainbow, which is, they collect garments for homeless LGBTQ youth in several cities.
00:34:46
Speaker
kind of in the East Coast mainly, but to do a fundraiser for them or something like that, I think would be a fun thing to do. But I am looking forward to not doing one every single, it seems like right now, as soon as one's over, I'm like launching, you know, launching the next one. And I have not had a lot of time to knit for myself. Yes, yes, I agree that for a year is a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. But it helped you reach your goal.
00:35:12
Speaker
It did help me reach my goal. It was really, it was, I mean, it's been interesting. It's sort of a stepping stone to a lot of, to a couple other fundraisers in the knitting community.
Shifting Focus to Personal Projects
00:35:25
Speaker
So I kind of from that, I've launched this sort of,
00:35:30
Speaker
yarn garage sale that I call D-stash for good, which is like a way for people to sell off their stash through me and we split the profits and that goes to the fundraising. And because I've met a bunch of dyers, it'll all be done by the time.
00:35:49
Speaker
we get this out, but I've just put together a yarn collection inspired by the sights and sounds of AIDS Life Cycle that I have like 21 dyers who have used inspiration photos and dyed up some yarn. So it's been a great gateway to a lot of other things. Well, and that part of it can still go on and you can still knit for yourself because you can be knitting with colors you love.
00:36:16
Speaker
Yeah. And doing it, doing any pattern you want. Yeah. And I mean, it's the thing I think when now that I've achieved sort of the fundraising goal, it'll just be a lot more, again, it's one of these relaxed, there won't be a deadline. And if I'm like, I want to, I want, I want to knit this sweater, let's turn, you know, let's do that into a, to a knit, make a long, maybe other people want to make it as well. And I was just actually,
00:36:44
Speaker
over the weekend chatting with a meta designer to an event. And I was like, oh, I'd love to be able to do something together. And after I got home, I just texted him and I said,
00:36:55
Speaker
It doesn't have to be a fundraiser. Like I enjoy running the nittelongs and I'm not sure that every designer loves to run a nittelong for their, for their own designs. I said, so if there's a designer out there that has a new pattern and they want to get some momentum behind it and want to run a nittelong, like I'd be happy to just run it for them and just, you know, we'll, we'll do zooms and we'll do, we may have to talk and in the process you can, can learn some really fun, new techniques.
00:37:25
Speaker
That's true. I mean, that is I mean, that's the other because it's been the great thing about this. A lot of my designing is not
00:37:33
Speaker
The sweater, I admit, is fairly simple, but that was on purpose. But a lot of what I've been doing has been utilizing newer techniques. I've released two cowls based on the same idea that were a double knit panel with double knitted brioche, which is not the same as standard brioche people. It does create a different fabric.
00:38:02
Speaker
but it's all done in one pass. Oh, okay. So it's not the whole having to slide things back in and it's a second time. So, um, I just yesterday cast on for a new design in triple knitting. I'm sorry, I had a mouthful, but I've never even heard of this. Um,
00:38:28
Speaker
We need to talk about Thursdays. But yeah, so I've been having fun in my design work of playing with new things, not necessarily things I've come up with, but things that friends have come up with techniques and things that I'm incorporating into my work. So yeah, that's been a real
00:38:58
Speaker
a real benefit of doing these needle longs because I never know what the designers are going to do. And I'm open to just about anything. And so through this, I've done my first branded color work project. I've done my
00:39:19
Speaker
I can't remember other things, but there's been several new techniques where it's been the first time I've ever done socks. I knit my first pair of socks through one of these knit-alongs. It's been a great technique pusher for me. I think that's one of the fun things about knit-alongs is you can pick up some new things.
00:39:39
Speaker
usually community people who are all doing it at the same time and you can share tips and techniques, tips and tricks, things like that. Tips, tricks, techniques, ideas. Gee, this works better for me this way, that works better for you that way. Yeah, yeah. That's what I like about a knit-along. I don't like mystery knit-alongs where I don't know what I'm going to make.
00:40:02
Speaker
I did one or two of them and I realized that they just didn't work for me because I wanted to know what I was going to get at the end of it. And I didn't want to just know, okay, this is going to be a shawl or whatever. I wanted to see it so I could plan it better. So I know that it's too late for people probably to join the ride this year's.
00:40:32
Speaker
I don't know when they cut off the ride. It would probably be tough for you to raise your money in a month and a half. Yeah. You just were sitting on something. As soon as the ride is over, they will open up. The ride happens the first week of June.
00:40:56
Speaker
In fact, starting during the ride, you can probably sign up for next year's ride if you were interested in doing that, either as a rider or there also sign up to be a roadie, which is another way to, if you're not into the riding, I won't say that it's an easier week for you because that is a really, a lot of those jobs are really physical and the hours can be tough because if you're a pit stop,
00:41:22
Speaker
team that is one of the morning pit stops, that means you're probably getting up at like three in the morning to get out on the road and go set up your pit stops. Right, exactly. But there's support staff and things like that that maybe they could still, even a month and a half before the ride, could probably
00:41:41
Speaker
still use people or are they pretty sad? I think so. I mean, if you had the flexibility to want to be on the ride itself, you could probably still sign up to become a roadie and they would just kind of put you where you need you. And then always, if you're in the Bay Area,
00:41:59
Speaker
at the front end of the ride, the actual, the day of like checking and stuff, they always needed a ton of volunteers to like help check people in and then things like that. Um, or likewise at the end of the ride, if you're in the Los Angeles area for the finish line crews, there's, you know, there's, they always need volunteers there to like, you know, direct people to where their bags are and things like that. So I think there's still plenty of opportunities to, to chip in. If it's something interesting. Wonderful. So.
00:42:30
Speaker
This is your last year. We've talked a little bit about what's coming, but do you have any plans for immediately after the ride? What's new? What's happening? What's going to happen this summer?
00:42:46
Speaker
other than maybe balling the bicycle for a little while. Well, I think I'll still try to get out occasionally. Where we live, the weather's always so pleasant that it is an easy way to get some exercise, and it's a really pretty area to ride around in. I think that in the fall,
00:43:06
Speaker
I'm going to I think there's going to be some design stuff. I have so I we did the, we did the, the Lewis and I did the scarf for the the knit stars pro am thing.
00:43:21
Speaker
just because we weren't sure how they were going to do the yarn and we thought we had an extra skateboard. I came up with a hat that matched the scarf. And so I put that out. I already have a couple ideas for another hat. I'm going to be taking this spring. I don't know how I'm going to fit it in, but I'm signed up for it. So I'm taking a hat design class.
00:43:43
Speaker
this spring. So I'm hoping that I can take what I've learned there and like maybe in the fall, do a couple more kind of hat type designs. And I want to do a
00:44:00
Speaker
because the yarn that we designed the scarf in is no longer in existence. So Nistars got out of the yarn business and so they sold off of that yarn. And so what I would like to do is go back and revisit the scarf and the existing scarf and hat in like a more available
00:44:19
Speaker
yarn and kind of put that back out as that. So there's gonna be some of that, but I'm really looking forward to this fall, the summer and this fall, just getting back into like knitting that's something that's not deadline knitting and just, I'm not going to any of the like Rhinebeck or any of that stuff this year. So I, you know, I don't have, I'll probably do some of the West Coast yarn
00:44:47
Speaker
the yarn event, but I'm really looking forward to just being able to work on projects that are for me. I'd like to do another sweater and just kind of take that time to just do some fun knitting for myself. That sounds like a good plan, a really good plan. With everything you've learned through Lewis and through the Knit Stars and these first couple of patterns, what advice would you give for someone who's thinking about getting started in designing?
00:45:18
Speaker
Well, if you can do it with a mentor who has years of design about that, that's a good place to start. But I would say for me, the two things that I walked away from and that I have continued to think about, one is to write everything down. As you're going through, just take even
00:45:44
Speaker
What you don't think even matters, just as you're swatching with different stitches, just keep a note on every single thing you did, if you changed anything, why you were doing something the way that you were doing it. Because when you get to the end and you're actually to the point where you're writing the pattern down,
00:46:09
Speaker
It's really, I found it really helpful to go back and have those details and like, why did we decide to, you know, why did we decide to do this thing this way? I mean, the other thing that came out of that process is think about the end before you think about the beginning. Because I, we, you know, we had all these like great ideas about like how we wanted to, you know, do this scarf and we had this infinity scarf was one of the versions of it.
00:46:36
Speaker
and it was just one of the things we said like oh we'll just you know we'll just knit it in a loop and then we'll we'll just like graft it together or whatever but
00:46:45
Speaker
Like I had never grafted anything in pattern. I just had in my mind like, oh, it'll be just like the Kitchener Stitch or it'll be something. Well, it's not. Grafting in a two by two rib is not the same as a Kitchener Stitch. And I hadn't even thought about how the thing was going to end. And then had gotten through the whole process of writing the whole thing up and then finally got there. And then I was like, oh, now what? Now I had to like go and go down a rabbit hole.
00:47:12
Speaker
That would be my other bit of advice is like, think about the ending before you get before you get started and kind of maybe work backwards a little bit as well as working forward. I could have used a little bit of that advice about a month ago because I ripped out the collar, the yoke section of my sweater five times.
00:47:39
Speaker
trying to get it right, because what I envisioned the neckline to be couldn't be done in the techniques I wanted to use. Oh. Yeah, I almost threw the talent on this. And it took me twice just to figure out why it wasn't going to work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's the other thing is that was the uncomfortable part of being under a deadline is because I said, well, if I had all the time in the world, I would be able to sit down and sort of figure out the
00:48:11
Speaker
sort of philosophy of grafting and how to think about it. But I was like, I just need it done. I just need the answer. And I just need to find a way to make this thing work. And I mean, that's a whole other show. So those two things. And then the other thing I would say that I will never not do. I mean, we couldn't is I will always, always have test netters.
00:48:42
Speaker
That because of the nature of the thing, we couldn't do it. And already, you know, there's been, you know, the thing that like I didn't want to happen is like someone was like,
00:48:56
Speaker
found an error or found a confusion or something in the pattern that seemed perfectly clear to me. But when they saw it, they saw something completely different. And I think if we had had test knitters do it, that would have saved me having to go back and fix things after. Don't ever release anything without both a tech editor and a test knitter. Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
It's just, yeah, I get that. You have to have both because I will tell you as a tech editor, the way I look at things is completely different from how the tester does.
00:49:37
Speaker
I'm looking for the technical. I'm looking for commas and periods. And yes, I am looking that it reads clearly, but I'm not doing it. And it's when you do it that some of those little things come to light.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely. It was just, you know, and some of them were the, the most efficient way of saying something is not always the clearest way of saying something in terms of in terms of the line by line instructions. And so some of those little little things, it doesn't change the pattern. But if there's a way to make it a little easier for folks to read. So that was the other big, the big
00:50:21
Speaker
big takeaway was like, I really wish we had been able to test it. So on the next one, there will definitely be a test as well as tech. I knew the tech editing because I've been down that path before, but I didn't really, I mean,
00:50:38
Speaker
I figured by the time it got that far that there weren't going to be any major errors, but it wasn't, it wasn't major stuff. It was like little, no, it's the little stuff that the testers, it's the little stuff that testers come up, bring up that you didn't even think of. Um, yeah, it's, it's an amazing thing. How different.
00:50:56
Speaker
we look at those two things, when you're a tech editor versus a tester, how you look at the pattern is completely different and the things you catch are completely different. Yeah, I get it. I tell people all the time, you can't do it with just one, you have to have both. And you can't skip either one because both will see different things.
00:51:27
Speaker
Right. It just, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Don't ever do it. But but I like to think about the end before you get really and truly I had thought about the end. It was just that I hadn't thought about why what I wanted to do wouldn't work the way I wanted to do it.
00:51:46
Speaker
Right. Right. And that's one of those things that like, you, you don't, you know, oftentimes you don't know until you're actually doing the thing. Like, you know, things that like seem, you know, seem perfectly clear, you know, on paper or in theory, it's not until you're like needles in yarn and hand and you're down to the nitty-gritty doing, you're like, Oh, yep, that, that's not going to work that way. Which, which testers are critical for that very reason. Yeah.
00:52:18
Speaker
So last but not least, Gary, where can our people find you and where can they find the patterns?
Gary Knits Gary Rides: Patterns and YouTube Channel
00:52:29
Speaker
So the patterns, the hat pattern is up on Ravelry, what I have not done
00:52:37
Speaker
And I don't know if it's going to get done before the ride. But the hat pattern is up on Ravelry. So it's called the Smock It To Me Hat. And it is on Ravelry. I'm Gary Knits End Rides. OK. And so it's up there. And hopefully I will get the scarf pattern, which is called Make The Turn Scarf, up there. It was in the pack from Knits Stars exclusive until the end of our little make-along. And now I just need to break that out and fix one little thing that someone
00:53:07
Speaker
was not a test editor, but is someone who effectively became a test editor because they found a little
00:53:14
Speaker
Rewarding that they wanted right more sense and I would like to try to get that is and I looked at it last night It's really quick to do so I should be able just to do that and get that up on Ravelry You can otherwise you can find me on on Instagram. I'm Gary knits and rides I know Gary knits Gary rides with underscores around and then I also have a YouTube channel called Gary knits Gary rise which is
00:53:39
Speaker
typical knitting YouTube where I'm talking about what I'm working on, but each episode I try to find things in the knitting community where people are doing fundraisers or charity worker or what I broadly call craftivism, which makes it sound more political than it really is, but it, you know, just people who are, whether it's a dyer that has a special color way that they're donating proceeds to something or someone that's collecting hats for a hospital somewhere. And I try to,
00:54:07
Speaker
put those out there and let folks know of things that I've found in the community of people doing things. I'll have to check that out. I didn't know you were a YouTuber. It's a little over a year, every couple of weeks. It's still pretty small, but I have fun doing it, so that's the main point. All right. Well, that's great. Gary,
00:54:30
Speaker
I want to just remind our listeners that Gary has been very, very big in teaching me about AIDS life cycle. And so I've talked with Ellie now and Gary about this really fabulous charity. They do a lot of really great work. So if you are in any way, shape or form able to provide
00:54:56
Speaker
services as a volunteer or funds to support a rider. Maybe if you don't know a rider, you can just donate to the scholarship fund yourself. Please do that because this really is a good charity worth supporting and they've done a lot of really great work in the past and they need your support to continue to do that. Absolutely.
00:55:21
Speaker
Gary, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. This has been a blast as usual. Catch you next time. Okay. Bye. Join me next time when I discuss some of the frustrations I hear from designers and possible solutions.
00:55:50
Speaker
Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you listen and join the conversation in our Ravelry or Facebook groups. For show notes or knit tech editing and related services, please visit my website at arcticedits.com.