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She might be an accomplished knitter today, but it’s not that long since Evin Bail O’Keeffe was struggling to stitch her first scarf.
“It kept getting wider and uglier,” she laughs.
“I just kept knitting it back and forth and trying to figure out what my error was in that row and how I could do it better the next row – and after about three months, it stopped getting bigger or smaller and it started to look rectangular.”
Ten years – and thousands of stitches later – however, Evin has teamed up with Irish Country Living for our new children’s wear knitting series.
Over the next four weeks, she will share her exclusive patterns for her Barra marled hat, her Ballyhoura baby blanket, her Farren booties and her Field & Sky pullover, which she hopes will appeal to novice and experienced knitters alike.
Background
But first, a little background on the Cork-based designer who is originally from Maryland in the US and who credits the influence of both of her grandmothers for her love of all things arty.
“They both instilled a sense of craftiness and creativity, but also resourcefulness, and I think that that’s made me a good crafter in some ways but also just a handy person,” she says.
Moreover, being diagnosed with an auto-immune condition as a child meant that Evin could not take part in activities like sports, so crafting offered her an outlet in many other ways.
I was in the hospital already for so much time so I would bring craft supplies and go around to the different kids in the hospital ward and teach them different things
.
After school, Evin studied communications and fine art and later moved to Silicon Valley with her husband.
But, in 2008, they decided they wanted “an adventure” before settling down to start their family.
Though how they chose Ireland might raise the odd eyebrow.
Evin Bail O’Keeffe. \ Donal O' Leary
“It’s always sunny where we used to live – rain maybe four days a year – so we kind of thought it would be nice to go someplace with weather… so we came here,” laughs Evin, whose ancestors originally came from Ballyvourney, while her husband’s family originated from West Limerick and Co Monaghan.
Meeting new people
Cork also offered great opportunities in tech for her husband, but while Evin continued to work remotely for a US company (and started a blog on life as an expat), it meant she had to be creative – literally – when it came to meeting new people.
“I had no friends,” she explains. “I thought: ‘Well, I can’t do sports, I have to meet people: let’s join a craft group.’”
At the time, there was a knitting group that met at Chambers on Washington St, though Evin explains that despite her talent for many crafts, it was something she had never managed to master ’til then.
It was definitely overwhelming at first when I could just knit in purl and do one cast on and one cast off and I felt a little limited and I felt like I needed to improve and I needed to know it all.
“But I also felt that I had to be patient with myself.”
But with practice – and lots of YouTube tutorials – Evin grew in confidence as a knitter – and as a somewhat accidental designer.
“I didn’t even know I was designing before I was designing,” she says, explaining how she would tweak patterns as she went along – adding an edge here, substituting a stitch there – before she made her very first piece from her own pattern; a winter hat for her husband.
“It took three attempts!” she exclaims of her “trial and error” approach.
Knitwear designer
However, it was not until 2013 that she found the courage to describe herself as a knitwear designer, following a health scare.
While pregnant in 2011, doctors found a tumour in her liver but could not operate at the time.
Fortunately, it was not cancerous but the procedure to remove it when her son was 18 months old left Evin in hospital for a month with liver failure.
“I didn’t have my son, I couldn’t work, I could barely knit because I was in so much pain and it just kind of made me realise I have to follow my dreams,” she says of her decision to write her first book when she recovered.
“And even if I failed and was horrible at it, I had to try.”
Not only did Evin write Bake Knit Sew, she set up her own independent publishing house, Anchor & Bee.
She also co-authored These Islands, a knitting book with patterns celebrating local, ethical and sustainable wool from Irish, Scottish and British sheep, and saw her blog, EvinOK.com, win best personal arts & crafts blog in Ireland in 2014 and 2017.
Today she balances her passion for designing, crafting and blogging with her day job as customer marketing specialist with tech company, Teamwork.com and, of course, family life as mum to two young boys.
And it’s her practical experience of knitting for her young family that has inspired her patterns for Irish Country Living.
For example, the booties have extra length at the ankles to stop them slipping off, the hat incorporates a sock yarn for stretch and shape, while the pullover is designed to be layered over a long-sleeved T-shirt or shirt so that the undergarment can take the brunt of the “jam or dirt” that invariably ends up on most children’s sleeves.
We would love to hear from any reader who decides to tackle one – or all four – of the projects. Let us know how you get on by emailing maria@farmersjournal.ie or by writing to Irish Country Living Knitting, Irish Farmers Journal, Irish Farm Centre, Bluebell, Dublin 12, with a picture, or share your progress on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #ICLEvin
Knit this stunning frontier shawl from new craft book, These Islands
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