Crochet Designer Tips from a Professional Crochet Designer | Podcast Episode #71

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Create a design collection to take it to the next level!

Creating a design collection is one way you can strive for bigger and better things both for your business and customers. There aren’t many designers out there doing it so this is one way you can be different! With a little time investment and planning, a design collection could be just the thing for your business this year.

Special Guest

Here to share her wisdom once again is Lena Skvagerson, the creative genius behind many of the designs at Annie’s Catalog and the Knit and Crochet Now TV show! She knocked my socks off in episode 31 of the podcast when she talked about garment design and grading and now she’s here to share her wisdom about taking your design to the next level with publications, collections, and the TV show!

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
Hey there and welcome to episode number 71 of the BHooked podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I’m so excited this month because we’re going to be talking all about designing. We’re going to cover lots of tips that are just going to help you achieve your goals as a designer.

We’re going to kick that off with a guest that I am just so excited to have back on the show. She was here in episode 31 and she talked all about sizing for garments and grading and gosh, I learned so much from her. That episode has been downloaded so many times, so I know she’s helped a lot of you. And now she’s back to talk about more design tips. Now I’m talking about Lena from Annie’s and I’m just so ecstatic to have her back.

Well, before we get to my chat with Lena, I have a couple of things I want to bring to your attention. First of which is the show notes page. You can access that at BeHookedCrochet.com/session071. That’s a place where you can find all the resources that Lena and I talk about today throughout the show. And you can also leave your questions and comments there. I encourage you to do so. Just scroll down to the bottom of that page. You’ll see the comments section.

If you love this episode, if you love to hear from Lena again, feel free to leave that in the comments section as well as your questions too. I’m right here behind the keyboard and I will answer as many questions as quickly as I possibly can.

So I mentioned last week that I’ve been working on Annie’s Hook and Needle Kit Clubs. I talked about the Sedona Shawl for a while as I was working through that one. And I’m going through those stash baskets now. And I really love the yarn that’s within this kit. It is a wool blend, but it’s a really, really soft wool blend. It can totally fool you. It feels just like an acrylic yarn. And that makes for a really soft basket.

There’s enough yarn to make three of them. So you can work through three stash baskets and they’re a good size too. So if you want to stuff some yarn in there, you can. I actually like to put them in like my bathroom and you can put some toiletries in there, put it on a shelf and that sort of thing.

So I’m working through those. It’s a great project and not to mention a really nice service too. I found a lot of joy in these subscription services here in the last couple of months, and I want nothing more than to just share that with you if you feel like it’s something that is of interest to you.

So Annie’s is sponsoring some of the podcasts here, and they have given me the opportunity to share this with you, and for that I’m really grateful for them, but I do want to encourage you to check this out if it is a service that you’re interested in.

Now you can have access to a membership, the Annie’s Hook and Needle Kit Club membership, by going to annieskitclubs.com/behooked. You can find all of the information there. You can see some of the other projects so you know kind of what you’re going to get before you buy it. That’s also a really great perk.

But they also have a money back guarantee, which is also really great. You can try it and if for whatever reason you’re not completely satisfied, you can return the kit and you won’t owe anything if it’s within that first 22 days. So head over to annieskitclubs.com/behooked to check out the Hook and Needle Kit Clubs today.

All right. Now, I know you’re really anxious to hear from Lena again and to get some design tips from her. We talk about just general design tips and publications and where you can submit your patterns. But I also want to somewhat selfishly ask her about the TV show because I know that’s something that I am—that is one of my biggest goals. I would love to be on the Knit and Crochet Now show.

We talk a little bit about that and how that production works. So if it’s something that you’re interested in too, she gives us the details on that. And then we also talk about planning out a collection. So if you want to have a bunch of different designs that all kind of fit within the same collection, that’s kind of her jam. That’s really what she does over at Annie’s.

So she does not hold back the wisdom here. She gives it all and I’m so excited for you to hear it. So here we go.

Lena, welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have you back today.

Lena: 5:19
Oh, I’m glad. I’m glad to hear that. Well, I’m flattered. It’s great to be back, Brittany. I definitely appreciate—

Brittany: 5:26
Absolutely. So for those people who maybe haven’t heard episode 31, I would encourage them to go listen to it because it was a great, great episode.

So they don’t have to go back right now. I want them to keep listening here. Can you give us a little bit of your backstory? Tell me about you and what you do.

Lena: 5:46
Well, my name is Lina Skvagarsson, and I’m born and raised in Sweden, and I entered the yarn industry already like at 22 or something. I started working for a big yarn company over there, or they were actually not that big back then, but over the years they grew.

And so not to go too deep into it, long story short is 10 years ago I moved to California because I have all of my father’s family over here. And I worked remote for the Scandinavian company for a couple of years, but then I got in touch with the people at Annie’s Publishing because they do a lot of magazines and books and other publications here in the American market.

So I started working with them to get our designs published in their magazines and became really good friends with several of the editors that way. So they offered me a job and I came in to the company four years ago. I would say part-time working as a designer, like their in-house designer, and part-time working with the TV show that they had just recently bought and were running—the Knit and Crochet Now TV show, a PBS TV show with knitting and crocheting.

And from there on, like these last four years, I am creating collections. We call them Annie’s Signature Designs Collections, as well as I do regularly design for all our different magazines and publications and for the TV show. So pretty busy, staying pretty busy over here.

Brittany: 7:25
Yeah, it sounds that way. It sounds like you have your hands in a lot of different things. And those are the two things that you mentioned there—collections and the TV show—that I am just super eager to get into because these are the sorts of discussions that people just don’t have right now.

The objective here in July is to talk about designers’ things—topics that can help designers grow, develop, become known—basically be whatever they want for themselves in this space.

And before we get into those like big next-level things, the first question that begs to be asked is: What do you need to do to call yourself a designer? Like, are you just a designer if you make something, or do you have to publish it or do something specific to be a legitimate designer?

Lena: 8:20
Well, that’s, that’s really—I mean, it is a great question because with so many other occupations, you get a title, you know, you do an education and you graduate and then you’re, you know, a doctor or whatever. But as a designer, it’s kind of like, you know, a little vague because technically, like if you’re sitting at home coming up with some great pattern ideas to knit for your grandson or—you know, are you a designer then?

You’ve been designing something because it’s kind of like designing is coming up with a unique new twist or just totally new idea of something that nobody’s done before. But then that would be more called maybe like an amateur designer. And then you have, you know, the professional designers.

So it’s a wide span of—where, yes, you could technically call yourself a designer as soon as you start creating things. But, of course, you know, getting a job with—like getting paid to be a designer—acquires more skills. You know, you have to have that whole math background where you’re able to calculate and write up patterns in five different sizes and, you know, get all that stuff together, be pretty good at sizing—

Brittany: 9:38
Yeah.

Lena: 9:39
—body measures and all that part in addition.

Brittany: 9:42
Yeah, that brings up a good point. I mean, there are probably a lot of us who are amateur designers and just creating things because they have something in mind and maybe they can’t find a pattern for it or they have a special request from a family member.

I wonder about—a lot of us are bloggers and we post our designs on our own website or maybe we sell our own designs through Etsy or some other online marketplace like that. Would you consider that an amateur designer or could you cross that realm of being a professional designer at that point?

Lena: 10:20
I mean, technically, as soon as you start selling your designs, I would say that puts a little bit of a responsibility on you because that’s when you start, you know, having customers—no matter if you get them through your own portal or website or you’re self-publishing them or if you’re hired by a company that just, you know, expects good design from you.

You have now like a second part. It’s not just you and your grandson anymore or, you know, or your husband. It’s somebody that is going to expect a great functioning pattern from you so that they don’t go out, buy yarn, spend all that money, spend all these hours. And then they come to a point in the pattern where they’re like, nothing is working out or the, you know, the shape or things like that.

And if they do come, you need to be there responsible to feed, you know, to work with them and figure things out for them, you know, edit your pattern. So I would say that starting to sell your pattern is kind of taking you to a more professional point as a designer.

Brittany: 11:26
Yeah, yeah.

Lena: 11:27
If that makes sense.

Brittany: 11:28
It does. It does. It totally makes sense. And I think that’s probably the moment that all of us dread, whether we designed it or whether we’re following the pattern, is—did you create something that can be replicated? And like you said, did that person invest their time and money into the right place so they could come up with that finished thing?

Lena: 11:50
Mm-hmm.

Brittany: 11:51
So… We talked about publishing online. You also mentioned that Annie’s has several other different ways of publishing your designs. Let’s go back and forth about how we could potentially get our designs out there. Let’s say we’ve gotten to the point where we are comfortable with designing. Maybe we have a few customers of our own. What would be the next step, perhaps?

Lena: 12:18
Well, like you said, there are ways where you could just go directly like through Ravelry and you can go through your own blogs. But if you want to be connected—and that’s probably like the first steps of starting to build yourself more of a professional name within the industry, designing—is to get connected with publishers one way or another.

And for like with Annie’s, like you say, all our magazines, you can be on their lists of designers where they will send out—before they start planning each new issue of the magazine—they have a theme, they put together a letter that they send out to their list of designers with things that they are looking for. And then you can submit—you put together your little swatches, maybe little drawings, your thoughts of what kind of design you could contribute to the magazine that fits the theme.

And then of course, if you’re on the list, you’ll get all the details on how to send it in and when and due dates and all that. So you would get all your stuff together and send it in. And, you know, for many people, that’s where it starts—like you suddenly you get this letter back where it’s like, yeah, we picked your design. And there you go. That’s an open door, which is super exciting, of course, to get in.

So that’s one way, of course, to get published in a magazine, go that route. But like for Annie’s, we also have our catalog. We have a catalog that we send out where we have patterns that people can buy, like separate PDF patterns. So we will have pictures in our catalog and then people can go to our website and order either just a download or a printed PDF that will be sent home to you.

And so that’s a place where we work more openly with designers—they submit their ideas and we can put them just in like our next upcoming catalog. And then there’s that… now I don’t remember what it’s called. Like you get a percent commission? Yes, exactly. So I don’t remember exactly the numbers, but you will get paid by the numbers of your pattern sold. And usually that contract would probably run for a year or so where we would sell the pattern.

So that’s another really cool way—if you think that you have sold well too—you know, that’s another way of getting your foot into it more on a professional level. But you need to know that you’re able to write those patterns right.

Brittany: 15:23
Exactly.

Lena: 15:23
Uh-huh. So that you don’t make a fool of yourself.

Brittany: 15:27
Right, right. Well, that kind of brings me to my next question that popped up: does that pattern have to—like when you’re ready to submit that—is it pretty much the finished product right then, where you are, you’re presenting it as it is? Or does it go through like a vetting process afterwards? Maybe a tech editor looks over it before it’s published?

Lena: 15:51
Well, all our magazine patterns go through a pretty tough… like, we would have—at Annie’s—we have tech editors, ladies and men that work for us for a long time that are just so good with numbers and everything. And they go through and they make sure to put it like in format, you know, the way we want our patterns to kind of like have a look.

Yeah, so they will definitely do that. But I mean, the way it works is that if they would have to spend tons and tons of time and rewrite a lot of it and find… they would probably put a little mark that we maybe don’t need to work with this designer again. I mean, that’s just the cruel reality, how things work.

But when they start seeing names that they feel like, “Oh my god, we always get great patterns from this person and we don’t really have to do that much to the patterns, they’re pretty good already,” that’s definitely where the door really opens for you in the future, I would say.

Brittany: 16:57
Yeah, that’s a good tip. I mean, recognizing that taking a step back and slowing down, maybe not rushing through that—when you present the best product, the best pattern that you can produce—then you’ll be rewarded for that.

Lena: 17:14
Absolutely. But I mean, and that’s like, you know, with most things around us. Of course, if you go in somewhere and you do a great job, you’re just going to keep being hired. So, you know, that’s the way it works here too.

Brittany: 17:27
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good to know. So we’ve talked about magazines. That’s a great way to submit, and probably I would say maybe a lesser workload because—I mean—you might spend a lot of time submitting to several different magazines, but you may only get one or two in like any given period of time. You could also fill the gaps by submitting to the catalog.

Another print form that comes to mind is books too. That’s hopefully a process that I wanna capture an entire episode about, but are you able to speak to any of the potential there?

Lena: 18:07
I would say like for a company like Annie’s, where we do magazines and books and catalogs—we have so many different options. It’s sort of like, if we get in touch with somebody who might be submitting catalog patterns for a while, and then the lady in charge of making our books decides like, “Okay, I’m going to do a book now about market bags,” she will send out this submission letter to all the designers that she has on her list.

And so next time you get—maybe you’ll get a submission letter for one of our books and you submit to that—and suddenly your design ends up in a book. It’s almost like, you know, when you get your foot in somewhere where there’s a lot of different outlets, so many times it’s like it may start with that somebody starts submitting designs for the catalog and then one thing leads to another.

And we all, of course, work together within the company. So if I have started working with someone, say for the collections, and I just feel like this is going so great, I just love how good of a job she’s doing on the designs and interpreting what we want and what we have in mind—of course, I’m going to talk to my colleagues about it, too.

And they would be like, “Oh yeah, I want to see if she can do something for our catalog or maybe for my upcoming book.” So, you know, that’s why I think it’s really cool to get in with a company like Annie’s. And that’s what I’ve been so excited about too, because there’s like so many possibilities and options for you once you have started connecting with a company that has so many things going on at the same time within the industry.

Brittany: 19:52
Yeah, so it’s very much about who you know. Real quick, before we get into the collections and really your superpower there, do you have any tips for people just starting those conversations?

I mean, would you just send out a random email? Or would you reach out to them on whatever their favorite social platform is—whether that be Instagram or Facebook or even Twitter? What’s the best way to slide your foot in the door there?

Lena: 20:27
Well, I would say that, you know, with everyone, we’re all so busy and there’s so much information overflow out on all the social media. So that being said, for us as a company, I would say that sending an email—or just a regular letter that somebody actually has to open—that kind of stands out today.

It does. Now I’m just brainstorming because I haven’t really thought about it. But I would say that receiving a nicely put together letter where you have a few samples of what you have done and what you can do, and presenting yourself a little bit—like who you are and how you work—that’s probably going to end up then putting you, if they feel good about you, on the designer list where they send out the next proposal.

When they want their next proposals for their upcoming magazine or their upcoming book, or they might even contact you directly to just see if there’s something different right away that they would want to see more of.

But yeah, absolutely. But then, like you said, I don’t believe that, you know, calling—these days, people are so busy. So probably best to send an email, but present it like in a very nice and organized way. And not too much, because then people don’t have that time, and it usually ends up being put aside to look at later. But just a nice little selection, I would say.

Brittany: 21:59
I would say to work your network. The whole reason why you and I were able to connect is because somebody else that I was friends with knew you and was like, “Hey, you need to have her on. She’s great.”

So I sent you an email and I mean, I didn’t know what the expectation would be. I mean, obviously, I knew you were incredibly busy, but I was really amazed at just how quick you were to respond and how receptive you were to the idea of being on the show. And here you are back for a second time.

So I know valuing the people that you’re already connected with—you never know who those people have already met or built a relationship with.

Lena: 22:44
Yeah. And of course, like you say, a great way of just making friends in the industry is if there is ever a chance to go to those trade shows or craft shows in general and then just be at the social level at those events.

Places—they’re always like social gatherings and events where you can just mingle. And that said, I know that some people are just, you know, amazing designers but not really that outgoing.

But if you are, that’s a great place, of course, to mingle and just start chit-chatting, because even a lot of our editors, they go to these shows and they love to meet new designers and just—you make new friends. And there are dinners and there are shows in the evenings and classes and all kinds of things where you can just get to know people.

Brittany: 23:34
Yeah. I heard something yesterday, actually, and I wish I knew the source, but what I heard was in relation to not being that outgoing or maybe being intimidated by going to those events or even just approaching somebody who you know, but maybe they don’t know who you are.

And they said: don’t give yourself more than three seconds before you approach that person. Because if you wait longer than three seconds, you give your brain time to tell you no, because you’re afraid.

So I thought that was a pretty cool little tip.

Lena: 24:11
Absolutely. And I think that’s true. It’s like you said, if you’re at a place like that and you see there’s an editor standing there talking—like everybody has a little name tag—just go up and be like, “Hey, I’m that and this is what I do,” and just get it done with.

Brittany: 24:30
Yeah. Yeah. And be genuine in your interest of just building a relationship with them—not necessarily selling yourself. I think that can put some people off a little bit.

Lena: 24:42
Yeah. But I mean, even for me coming from Sweden, you know, 10 years ago, like I said, and I worked for this Scandinavian yarn company and I didn’t know anybody on this side of the world in the industry—I just started out sending…

But then, of course, I was already with a company, so it’s a little bit easier. But I was like sending out just nice letters to all the magazines in America, pretty much, where I just said, “Hey, my name is Lina Skvargason. I worked for this company for this and this many years. We do this design. And I would love to get in touch with you, maybe work with you.”

And there were a lot of magazines that I did not, you know, of course not hear back from. But then, you know, enough happened—came back—and with that Annie’s people, and that got me into Annie’s eventually. So definitely.

Brittany: 25:27
Yeah, it works. If you put yourself out there eventually somebody will notice.

Lena: 25:35
Absolutely.

Brittany: 25:36
Well, that’s cool. There’s so many good tips there. I even hesitate to kind of steer away from that side of the conversation, but I know that there is so much value in understanding the importance of creating a collection and what that means in terms of taking you to the next level.

I mean, so many of us, myself included, we have sort of like one-off projects where we’ll design one thing and then we move on to the next. But offering a collection, I feel like, is serving your audience so much better because when they get finished making that beautiful sweater, well, maybe they want to wear a hat with it too or have a coordinating scarf.

So that’s cool. I’m really interested to learn just the process. How does that even begin? Like where does the idea begin for a collection?

Lena: 26:30
Well, you know, that’s how it was. Like we started—this is now our, like, right now I’m actually on a photo shoot, taking a break today, shooting the fall collection. And this is going to be now our sixth collection with Annie Signature Designs.

From the beginning, we didn’t make collections, but it kind of started taking shape where we felt like we wanted to give people a more cohesive, like you say, gather, like a collection that if you like one piece, then you can move on and like the next piece and you can feel that it all kind of mix and matches.

And I would say also, as time goes by, people will know, get to know my style and my, you know, my kind of patterns where people start thinking, you know, if I really like working this one, I most likely would like, you know, like the pattern and the way this is structured for the second one.

And it also gives, as a company, so much more to work with. Like we will now have a group that can be gathered together in all kinds of marketing and presentations. Instead of just showing one picture, we can present this whole idea.

It’s hard to maybe even say exactly how I feel about it, but it’s more like I get a feeling where I can present the whole idea of a look that I would love to see the coming season in my wardrobe.

So when you say, how does it come together? Now, at this point, we already know that we… we are going to make a collection.

So I have a colleague who’s been with the company for many, many years. Her name is Connie Ellison. And so she’s been working for our catalog department and our books and involved in so many. So she has a great knowledge of what our customer base at Annie’s are wanting and expecting a little bit, where I have my own personal sense and all my kind of background in the European world, hand knitting and crochet industry.

So we come together and we start brainstorming about what, you know, what could be in a collection. And we kind of map out that, you know, we know people love cardigans. So we know we wanna have a few of those.

And then we kind of make a grid where we say like, okay, two cardigans, one sweater, one vest so we, you know, we spread it out and it’s kind of easier when you have it all laid out.

And then once we kind of like said that okay we know we need 12 pieces all together to make a collection and we’ve made sure that okay one shawl, one, you know, one hat kind of like that, then the next step is to start putting the different yarns we want to work with and see what brands, yarn companies that we would like to pick yarns from.

And we start putting the colors into this grid so that we make sure that we don’t end up with like three brown pieces and nothing in the maroon. So it’s kind of like that way, very, very structured, where we end up with a whole grid of we make sure we have a little bit of everything there, a little bit of everything as far as colors.

But of course, you know, we have a sense: what colors are we seeing this next fall? Like for a while, we’ve been very neutral. It’s been very like this coming fall already now, if you start looking at some of the clothing brands, you can see how there’s gonna be a lot of like, really like fall colors—gonna be mustard and olive and maroon, like these really heavy colors.

So of course then we kind of make sure that we spread all those colors out into the grid. So yeah, so I mean, I can go very detailed into this.

Brittany: 30:15
Oh, yeah, yeah. Like so many questions popped up. First of all, I love how structured that is. Because I know if there’s one thing that I’ve learned, that applies to pretty much every area of my life, like my business, my designs, heck, even my meal planning.

Being structured and starting with a grid or a table or something where I can fill in the blanks and say, let’s say meal planning, totally like off topic. But I know that I need five dinners for Monday through Friday. And I’ll know maybe one day my husband’s working from home. So I’ll know that I need to cover breakfast and lunch for two people on those days in addition to.

So I really like fill in the blanks based on… the need. And it sounds like that’s exactly what you guys do for the collection. It’s exactly what you could do when you’re planning a blog post or writing a book. I mean, it’s so cool. I love that you guys utilize it.

The other thing that came to mind is one resource that I use when I’m trying to think about fall designs or spring design, summer, whatever the upcoming season may be. I use the Pantone forecast. And I think if you type into Google Pantone colors for fall 2018, it breaks it all down for you.

I don’t really know. I always refer to that, but I don’t necessarily always verify it later on once I see that the colors have already come out. Do you have any experience with that? Is it very accurate?

Lena: 31:56
Well, both, because they would say color of the year might be purple. And then that goes for home decor and everything. So you need to kind of then take it into your own, in part of the, you know, like for us, and we, for example, then already know that there’s some colors that just generally, whatever they say, they just don’t really sell well, because we know, you know, and we always know that blue and gray, kind of like those basic colors, they will always sell well, no matter if they say orange is the color of the year.

And, you know, if they would say orange is the color of the year, we would be like, maybe we should be a little bit careful because that’s not usually a color that we sell a lot of. So definitely, you know, take it with a little bit, kind of like almost like just look at—they do this color of the year, but then they also, like you say, they put together little different grids of color spectrums.

And so you could look at that and then just maybe let it give you a feeling of what’s going on. Yeah. And, you know. Even sometimes, like for us, if we focus like the garment industry here, it’s like say that there is a lot of a certain color. Maybe when we do the photo shoot, maybe she is wearing a shirt of that color, but her cardigan is gray because we know that when you make a big cardigan, you want it to last for a lot of seasons.

So that’s why people tend to go a little bit neutral. Almost like when you style your living room, like you might have like a beige couch but then you pop the pillows—you know, if they say lime is the color you could maybe your pillows are lime.

So that’s a little bit how we do it too—that we might be a little bit more careful on what the colors we actually pick for the garment itself, but then the color of the year or the trends is more affecting how we actually end up styling it with the other clothing in the outfit when we take the pictures.

Brittany: 34:03
That’s another one of those instances where it’s like, wow, that makes a lot of sense. But maybe you wouldn’t have thought about that. Maybe you think that because this is the color of the year, that everybody is going to want maybe a purple cardigan.

I know for me, I love purple. It doesn’t really look great on me. So I probably wouldn’t be the person to make a purple cardigan. But I would definitely make a gray one and maybe wear a purple shirt under it.

Lena: 34:27
Yeah. And also like you see, like for bloggers, like if you do something that’s just going to have like an instant bang, you know, a one of a kind, something that’s just happening. I don’t know how to explain it, but more like this short term thinking, then you can go really like hot trend on things.

But when you’re making a collection that, you know, you want it to live for a longer time. And because when the season is over and, obviously, the patterns are still out there for a long time. So that’s why you also wanna be a little bit more thinking long term when you pick your colors that just what’s actually right now is the trend.

Brittany: 35:10
Exactly. Yeah, you’ll spend a lot of time investing especially if you’re doing this alone like say you want to publish your collection on your own website and you are designing you’re making you’re editing all of those patterns. That’s a significant time investment so you want it to have some longevity so that maybe you can promote it next fall or next winter as…

Lena: 35:30
Well absolutely.

Brittany: 35:32
Yeah, good tips there. Thanks. I love the idea of collections. I think it’s definitely a challenge that I would like to take for myself because I’m one of those people where I do create one design and sort of move on to the next thing. And that really just goes into my personality.

I like to do different things, really. I’m one of those people that I’ll get Salk Syndrome syndrome for anything that I have to make more than one of. So I don’t necessarily enjoy it the second time around, but I love making it the first time. So it’s a personal challenge that I’m going to take for myself to try to release some kind of collection in the future.

Lena: 36:16
Well, it’s fun to see it all come together.

Brittany: 36:19
Now, the next thing I am probably—well, the most thing I’m interested in here—is about the TV production, because I’ll be fully honest and transparent with you here. One of my number one goals is to be on a TV show, to teach my craft, to reach a different audience.

And gosh, it’s just a milestone for me. It’s just something that I really love, want to achieve and so I’m interested to tap into your resource here. You can talk about the TV production that you’re working on and how all that comes together.

I’m trying to think of a good starting point because it pretty—I’m pretty much a blank slate when it comes to this. I’m versed in the online way of producing video but definitely not the TV production side.

Lena: 37:12
Mm hmm. Well, yeah, it’s like you say, it’s a what, where do we start? Where do we start? Well, I could mostly—I could just speak for our own TV show. You know, the way we work with it, but it’s a TV show. We’re now on our ninth season that is just launching right—I mean, right this summer, it’s coming up on the PBS stations.

And so the TV show has had pretty much the same format because it’s worked really well. So we have 13 episodes, weekly episodes, and we do both a knit project and a crochet project. And then, we have a little bit of a technique corner, and we tape the TV show once a year and go and tape all these episodes at once.

And yeah, in the production, of course, there’s like a huge amount of planning that goes on ahead of time. And the people we work with, of course, almost goes hand in hand with the designers. Because I would say that up till now, the people that are on the TV show as our experts are also people that we know really well from working with them personally as designers, contributing with designs to us for years back.

And that’s kind of how they ended up on the TV show—that we picked them because we know that they will design some great patterns to share on the TV show. We know that they also— I mean, an important part is that we know that they all have been or used to be on social media, doing YouTube videos or doing live things because it can actually be very nervous and stressful to be in front of the camera.

Oh, yeah. It really can. So even if you’ve done it, like even for me, I mean, of course for me, it’s like—the first times are like extremely stressful. So to know that a person has a lot of self-confidence and can both, you know, be a little bit personal and funny at the same time as they can show perfectly how to do these things that they’re supposed to show, that’s important when we pick people who’s going to be on the TV show.

And that’s, I mean, that’s how it works in the pre-production—that we pick all the projects for the season, same thing there, a lot of grids, a lot of like, you know, what’s going to be in the different episodes, what different designs, what designs will these designers contribute with? And what do we go out and have yarn companies contribute with designs?

And then, we also make—I would design some of the open slots that we have left when all that is put together. And we want to cover things that we, of course, didn’t cover in the past couple of seasons so people don’t feel like because we have some core followers for the TV show. So you can’t show, you know, the same thing over and over again.

You kind of have to keep thinking like that. Oh, you know, should we do something with star stitches? No, we actually showed that like two seasons ago. So we were very creative in that process of making sure that we come up with new things that we haven’t shown before.

And then the expert works months ahead of the filming itself, finishing these projects and writing up all the patterns, having them all tech edited and making sure that we’re going to show exactly what the pattern says. And all the patterns are finished before the TV show actually tapes so that we can have all that on camera, like ready—all the projects.

And then we go into the TV studio and we work intensely for a week where people are lined up, coming in different days and doing their tapings.

Brittany: 41:14
Very cool. So when did those first conversations start? You said that the new season comes out in the summer. So is this something that you guys are planning maybe a year in advance or maybe not quite that extreme?

Lena: 41:29
I would say without saying exact dates, it’s like we started the planning early for this new season. We started planning like early last fall, I think. So this is also Connie Allison, the person that I talked about before, my colleague that works with all our catalog department.

So she and I are like co-producing the show. We got together probably in August, September last year, started mapping everything up with grids and projects and what experts to invite and all that. And we taped in—now I’m like, was it back in February? We taped the show.

And since then we’ve been just working on all getting everything together, making sure everything is correct and they lay out everything. And then in the beginning of June, it’s actually ready to start recording to go on air, but that means there are like 350 PBS stations in America and each PBS station has their own programmer that decides their weekly schedule.

So all these TV productions that are producing food shows or woodwork or like all these different, we all compete about getting onto these, you know, shows. So that’s why we, many times when we hear people saying like, oh, they don’t show it on my PBS station, we say, you know, call your station and tell them that you want the show because that’s many times the pressure that the programmers get to bring in a show that they don’t have on their schedule.

But as far as I’ve heard the last numbers, I think we’re on like 80% of the PBS stations. Oh, wow. But yeah, so that’s pretty good. But then we might be like at 3 a.m. in the morning on some stations. Yeah. But that’s when people can DVR or, you know, something like that.

But then a couple of months later after PBS brings it up, then the show also gets released on Create TV. So that’s when it really starts reaching because a lot more people have access to the Create stations.

Brittany: 43:34
Yeah.

Lena: 43:35
So yeah, and then they keep doing reruns. So I think even season eight and season seven are like showing now regularly on Create TV. And now the new season nine is going to be on Create hopefully beginning of September. Oh,

Brittany: 43:51
Cool. Yeah, a couple of months ago, my husband and I were sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning, and the Knit and Crochet Now show came on TV and I was like, oh, we have to watch it.

And of course, he gets it. So he’s sitting there sipping on his coffee and you come on the TV and I was like, it’s Lena. I’ve had her on my podcast before. It was just one of those like… I don’t know, start of moments where I was like, I’ve met her. I’ve talked to her. That is just too funny.

Yeah, we had a cool, funny little moment there. It was really cool to see it. It seems to be hit or miss in my area, so I think I need to maybe contact my network and tell them that we actually want to watch it here. Exactly. So the new season, you said, will start hopefully at the beginning of September?

Lena: 44:45
Yeah, on Create TV and on PBS stations already now. I think they’re showing the third episode this coming week, like on some of the first stations that picked it up, are already now on the third episode.

So, but I mean, we have on our knitandcrochetnow.com, like our website for the TV show, there is a station finder. You can go in there and plug in your zip code and it’s going to come up the viewings in your area. So that’s a great way to start out.

Brittany: 45:17
Okay. Yeah. I’m curious too. Is it streamed anywhere or is it only on Create TV and PBS where people can catch them?

Lena: 45:24
Yes, to actually give even more people like all these options of access. We have on our website where you could get an all access membership, which is like a yearly membership where as soon as you get that membership started, you can watch every single episode that we’ve ever done—like all eight previous seasons.

So that’s like eight times 13 and you also get access to all these because all the patterns on the TV show are free patterns, so as a member you get access to all these. So I, you know, it’s several hundred patterns total that you get if you sign up as an all-access member. So that’s one way of doing it.

We also have the whole TV show each season comes out like on a DVD so you can buy the DVD and then you can plug it into your computer like any time and just watch, you know, any episode. And so that’s another option.

And then we also at Annie’s, we have this cool new program that started a couple of months ago. That’s called Annie’s Creative Studio, which is like an online library of everything craft—like everything from quilting, knitting, crocheting, and all kinds of craft.

And if you have that membership, you will also get access, in addition to all these other things, all these other online demos, you also get the TV show episodes. So that’s called Annie’s Creative Studio.

Brittany: 46:54
Okay, very cool. I’ll link to that in the show notes too. So if people are interested in seeing it, maybe they can’t catch it when it’s actually playing on the TV show, they’ll know where they can have access to that too. Yeah.

Lena: 47:09
You don’t want anyone to miss the TV show.

Brittany: 47:12
No, no, it really is great. It’s so much fun. I think most of the time when I catch it, it is on a Saturday morning. And I mean, it’s just so nice and relaxing. There’s just not very many shows, if at all. Honestly, it’s the only one that I have seen personally on TV.

And so to find something that’s related to your passion and it’s on TV and it’s knit and crochet, like it’s just… It’s so much fun. It really is.

Lena: 47:40
It is fun. Yeah, it’s definitely. I’m so glad that you like it.

Brittany: 47:45
I really do. Yes, yes. And gosh, I enjoy our chats so much. Every time, just so much. I think you’re probably one of the most interesting people I have ever had the pleasure of speaking with.

Lena: 47:56
Oh, thank you, Brittany. I’ve been in the industry like too long, I would say. I have so many different things and I just love, I’m so excited about everything still. So I hope that’s part of it, like sharing my enthusiasm because I can’t tell you how much I love everything knitting and crochet.

Brittany: 48:16
Yes, it’s so refreshing to know, too, that somebody who’s been in the industry for so long is still so passionate. You’re still in your honeymoon phase.

Lena: 48:25
Yeah, true, true.

Brittany: 48:29
So I’ve heard that you have an upcoming craft tour. And honestly, I have no clue what that means, what it is, or what you’re going to do. So can you share a little bit of that with us?

Lena: 48:40
Oh, yes. This is so much fun. We have started… A couple of years ago, Annie started doing craft tours. So we’ve had craft tours to Ireland and to Italy. But for the first time now, there is going to be a craft tour to Norway. So that, of course, comes really close to my heart, being Scandinavian.

They asked me to go join this tour to hold workshops in the evening. And pretty much the tour is going to Norway—it’s like a week or, like, I think with the travel days it comes up to like nine days. So we would go to—we fly into Norway, all these people that sign up to go on the trip, we kind of are all on different flights and fly into Norway the same day, and then they round us up in the hotel.

There’s going to be all these cool things with welcome dinners, and then we’re going to do all kinds of tours during the days. Some of them are knitting and crochet related, as far as going to, you know, we’re going to visit some big yarn stores in Oslo, and we’re going to go to a knitting festival up in Bergen, and we’re going to go to some knitting museums and things like that.

We’re also going to go and see the Nobel Prize, you know, the blue hall where they give out the Nobel prize each year. We’re going to see all these kind of famous things that you hear from Norway. And we’re also going to be doing a fjord tour, like on a boat.

And I know, cause I went on the tour to Italy last year. The thing is that it’s just so cool. You get together with people that have the exact same interests as you. And at first, we’re all like, we don’t know each other, right? But then you’re so much together, so you form these instant friendships.

In the evenings, you sit in the lobby of the hotel and you knit and you crochet and you chat about all your things, and we do workshops. So I’m super excited. I think we’re up to like 28 people now right now, and I think—I mean, it’s still time to sign up, but I think people should pretty much start hurrying if they want to go because I think we’re about to sell out spots.

But no, definitely. So this is end of September, last week of September—I think we’re leaving on September 22nd, and yeah, so…

Brittany: 51:10
Where can they go to sign up for that or to learn more about it and see if it’s something they could do?

Lena: 51:15
They should go to our website, anniescatalog.com, our main website. And when you go there, up at the top, there is going to be something you can click that says Annie’s Craft Tours.

Brittany: 51:33
Okay. All right. Awesome. So when you—I’ll link to that too in the show notes so people can find it. That’s really cool that you do that every year. And that last year it was in Italy.

I took my first trip outside the U.S. It was in 2016, I believe. It’s silly that my years are running together there. But we went to Italy and that was my first experience outside the U.S. And it was just an amazing experience being able to—we found a couple of local yarn shops and, you know, had to Google how to say yarn in Italian because I just knew very basic things.

So what is it? Oh my gosh, you’re going to put me on the spot. I believe it’s lana. Somebody out there, please correct me because I’m sure that’s probably not right.

Lena: 52:26
Well, or it would mean wool. Maybe lana is wool. I don’t remember either, but something—yeah, lana is something that has something to do with yarn.

Brittany: 52:35
Yes, yes. I think that’s what Google Translate told us. So we went with it. We found a place in Florence, I believe, and I bought some just really beautiful roving… It was like 100% wool.

I found this pretty pale pink color and gray. And I had a vision to do some type of colorwork with it. But honestly, I haven’t broken into it because it’s almost become like a relic or something. Yeah, it was a gift that I brought back from my first trip away from the U.S., being in this amazing and beautiful country that my husband and I just had so much fun in.

And I kind of just want to enjoy it for a little bit longer before I find a project for it.

Lena: 53:27
I know that feeling. And that’s what I think. I mean, I think that the whole part of traveling—I think there are so many people out there that would love to travel but don’t have a partner that loves to travel maybe, or maybe don’t have a partner at all.

And that’s why I think these craft tours are so great because you can actually just, you know, get out of the, like, dare to just jump on it and do it—even if you’re alone, because you are going to make so many new friends and there are going to be all different people with the same interests.

And that’s a great way to dare to go out and just enjoy and get out of your zone and get to see new cool things that are within your interest area.

I mean, on the craft tours too, people will bring their sister or their husband or people that don’t knit or have any interest but just want to join, and that’s perfectly cool too.

Brittany: 54:20
Yeah, yeah. It sounds like a lot of fun. It’s definitely something that I’ll have to check into. I definitely won’t be able to make the one this year, but maybe next year. That would be a lot of fun. We do love to travel, so that would be a great opportunity to make that happen.

Lena: 54:34
Yeah, I hope to.

Brittany: 54:35
See you there. Yes, I hope to as well. And it’s been such a pleasure, again, chatting with you. And you knocked my socks off again and just—I appreciate all of your knowledge and wisdom and your willingness to share it with us again today on the show. So thank you so much.

Lena: 54:51
Well, thank you, Brittany. It’s always fun to chat with you. You’re so cute.

Brittany: 54:57
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed that chat with Lena and I hope you got a lot of really great information from what she had to share with us. I know I took a lot away from this episode learning about how the Knit and Crochet Now TV show works and how they recruit for that as well as a collection, right?

I feel like these are two things that are higher level things for designers or higher level goals to strive for. And when you set your goal just a tiny bit outside your comfort zone, I feel like you have the potential to unleash more of you than maybe even what you thought you had in you.

So these are higher level things. I’m so grateful to Lena for sharing this with us today. I know I’m going to take some action on some of the things that she talked about, and I hope you will too.

And don’t forget that you can add your questions or comments to the show notes page for this episode, and you can get to that at bhookedcrochet.com/session071. Just type that right into your browser, and you can leave a comment in the section there at the bottom of that page. I definitely encourage you guys to continue the conversation there.

You can talk back and forth. I know one of the biggest things that’s helped me as a designer is to connect with other designers. I know it sometimes feels a little bit weird to kind of become friends with people who maybe we feel like we’re in competition with, but man, that has been nothing but untrue to me.

I know that that’s our natural tendency, but once I stepped out of that comfort zone and realized that we all have something to bring to the table, that’s really when just the floodgates opened for me. So connecting with other designers is my little tip for you here at the end of the show.

And you can do that by chatting over on the show notes page.

And before we wrap things up for today, I want to give you just a little bit more information about Annie’s hook and needle kit clubs. We didn’t talk too much about that with Lena because this is part of the business that she doesn’t really do much with, but it’s a great service.

I know that I’ve been working with it for the past couple of months and it’s a pretty affordable service as well. Annie’s is offering 50% off your first kit, which is really great. You pay $10 plus shipping and handling. You can try it out, and if for some reason you don’t love it, then you can cancel your membership, you can return your kit, and you don’t have anything to lose there.

But if you love it, you do stand to gain. Just for me, it’s a lot of joy each month because I have a project that comes to my door. I don’t have to do any planning and I don’t have to make any decisions.

I make enough decisions throughout the day that when I’m ready to just sit down and enjoy my craft, decision making is off the table. I just want to do something that can bring me back to my craft and make Annie’s Hook and Needle Club has been doing that for me lately.

So you can find out more information at annieskitclubs.com/bhooked—that’s B-H-O-O-K-E-D.

That’ll do it for today, guys. Thank you so much once again for joining me. Thank you so much to those of you who have left a rating and a review in iTunes. I go in and I read every single one of those, and I’m just so grateful for you that you spent some time to do that for me—to let me know that I’m on the right track and to give me some constructive feedback.

If there’s something that maybe I could do differently or do better, I really, really appreciate that. If you haven’t left a rating or a review, you can do so in iTunes and a quick link that you can access that is BHookedCrochet.com/iTunes.

And if you have just a second, you can leave a star rating or if you have a couple of minutes and you want to share something with me whether it be some feedback, ways that I can improve, or if you have something great to say, I’m definitely all ears. I love to read that and I love to say it and I would be very grateful for you for that review.

So thank you so much. I will see you next week, same time, same place. I’ll see you then, guys. Bye.