We got a chance to chat with Yvonne Poon (the designer of this month’s Golden Gate Park Shawl).

Read on to learn more about her – and her love for all things Baseball!

Tell us a bit more about yourself. Where do you live? Who do you live with? How did you end up there? Where are you from originally?

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband and daughter. We also have a son who’s away at school.  I was born and raised in San Francisco.  I attended Cathedral High School (now Sacred Heart Cathedral) and went to college at UC Berkeley.

Who taught you to knit?

My mom and babysitter taught me how to knit and crochet when I was about eight years old. They knew the very basics and that was just enough to make me dangerous. My mom taught me how to slip the first stitch to make beautiful slip stitch edges, and she taught me “yo, k2tog”. Those were fancy stitches to me! The slip stitch edge has really shaped how I knit and how I design.  It adds simple detail to knit pieces and gives them a finished look.

Why do you like to design?

Designing for me starts with the intangible. I see things in my head with a certain shape and a type of stitch pattern. How will I construct it to get the shape, drape or fit I’m envisioning? What stitch pattern will I use? I love the challenge to make the intangible tangible. My dad was an electrical engineer. He has three daughters, and none of us followed in his (traditional) engineering footsteps. But I consider designing “engineering” because I use math and science to create, develop and produce my designs. Shaping, incorporating different stitch patterns with different repeats, determining finished sizes and designing to stay within the parameters of a skein’s yardage all need math. How to achieve the desired fabric, understanding the properties of the fiber with which I’m working, and how that affects the finished, blocked piece involve science.

Do you do anything else in the knitting space?

I’m a tech editor for knit and crochet patterns. I’m also one of the co-editors of The Sun and Fog, collections of knit and crochet designs celebrating community from the foggy shores to the sunny valleys of Northern California. Our collaborations promote designers, dyers and yarn shops in Northern California.  The collections started in the summer of 2020.  We produced a winter collection, and we’re currently working on the summer 2021 collection which will be published in June.

What are your favorite things:

• Colors – Orange!
• Yarn weights – Fingering and DK
• Fibers – Wool
• Types of objects (e.g., shawls, hats, etc.) – Shawls, ponchos and cowls

Do you have a design that you think people should give a little love?

Love and looks for any and all of my designs are always appreciated, but I would love to call attention to one particular wrap design, Grant Avenue Stroll. I designed this wrap for I Knit San Francisco. I couldn’t have been more thrilled that the next publication in the I Knit series was coming to my hometown. I was excited to tell my story about growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown using yarn and needles. While I didn’t live in Chinatown, I spent a lot of time there growing up. My grandparents and relatives lived there, my mom and relatives had businesses in Chinatown, my sisters and I went to church and day camp there, and we would go grocery shopping in Chinatown every weekend. Grant Avenue Stroll is a sampler, and I chose stitch patterns to give knitters visuals of the memories and places that are most dear. I couldn’t include all the places so I picked just a few, and I designed the wrap to be a walking tour of Chinatown through my needles.

Can you tell us about your process when you design? I’m curious about your inspiration and how you bring that to life.

I was having a conversation with my friend and fellow designer, Pamela Minniear of No Panic Knitting, about how different our design processes are. I start with a stitch pattern and shape and make several calculations before I get anything onto needles. Excel is one design tool I could not live without. Once I have a pretty good idea of numbers, I revisit the stitch pattern and maybe look at more stitch patterns and then draw out the shape, depending on the construction. I estimate yardage to include swatch yardage and extra yardage. I’m sensitive to budgets so I try to work the design and numbers so knitters don’t need to buy an extra skein of yarn to use just a few yards. Sometimes that’s unavoidable because of grading and different sizes and not all put-ups are the same, but I try my best. I also try to be sensitive to the wonderful dyers who provide yarn support as I would not want to ask them to send a full skein of yarn for the design to have only four rows of that one color. There are lots of things to consider when designing!

What made you choose to submit to Knotions?

Lori Wagner of Lori Wagner Designs has had a few designs published by Knotions. She loves working with Knotions and encouraged me to submit a proposal. I also wanted to put myself out there a little bit more. I love self-publishing because I can work on my own schedule and not on someone else’s. But in order to get my name and designs out there, I needed to make a trade-off. I’m so grateful my Golden Gate Park Shawl design was accepted by Knotions as they are a wonderful publication to work with. And if you’ve read this far into my Designer Focus, thank you for staying!

Other than knitting and designing, do you have any other creative endeavors?

I used to bead, sew, embroider and cross-stitch, but I don’t have time for these creative outlets these days. I crochet when I come across a design that grabs me or has a technique I want to learn. I walk and exercise every day because it’s important to make time for one’s mental and physical health every day.

What are your other hobbies? I know there’s one in particular that we’ve talked a bunch about 🙂

I love baseball! I’ve been a San Francisco Giants fan since I was 12. They are “my guys”. I love being at the ballpark. I love watching the games. I love looking at baseball stats and the stories the numbers tell. Many people don’t like baseball for its pace of play, but I think it’s perfect. My husband and I love to follow the Giants when they’re playing in different cities, and