Lara Neel has written her first book!

All images produced by and used with permission of Lara Neel
Many of you may know Lara from her Math4Knitters podcast, or as the designer of several hundred free patterns that she published in her last job working for the Journal Gazette newspaper here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has devoted a lot of time and a million stitches to her craft over the years and I'm so pleased to share with you her new book, Sock Architecture, published by Cooperative Press (also available on Ravelry). In her book, she shares techniques for building your own great socks with 17 top-down toes, 68 top-down heels, 17 toe-up toes, and 26 toe up heels.
No really.
One could make 1156 unique socks from the top down, and 442 from the toe up using this book.
One could turn out one sock every day for eight years, and not knit the same sock twice.
I get goosebumps just thinking about it!

Uncommon Dragon sock in Simply Sock Yarn, Wasabi
Now, I'll admit, Lara and I are friends. I sat next to her every Sunday for the past several years, knitting away while drinking coffee and oversharing about our personal lives. She knows more about me than many people and hopefully will keep her mouth shut about all the bad things I said during my very uncomfortable last pregnancy. I still get the giggles about some of the things we said way too loudly in public and around children. So when I tell you that you really, really need her new book, it comes from a place of not only being oh-so proud of my dear friend, but also a place of awe that she spent so much time, effort and dedication on this all-encompassing sock knitting publication. Having a book published is something that most of us will never experience, not only because of the talent it takes to do so, but the ability to put the rest of one's life aside for the better part of a year to create something out of nothing. I couldn't do it. And I'm so thankful that writers like her can. And that publishers like Cooperative Press give them the forum to do so.

Checked Up sock in Simply Sock Yarn, gray
Enough gushing. I'd love to share a bit of Lara Neel with you, so I asked her to answer a few questions about her book and her process. And then you'll want to enter the contest at the bottom (details in the last paragraph) because Lara is giving FOUR lucky commenters a free book, and I'm giving another four commenters two skeins of Simply Sock Yarn, Solids so you can knit your own socks. Eight winners total.

Toe of the Dyad Sock shown in Simply Sock Yarn Mocha and Adobe
Allison: So, Lara, tell me how the idea of this book came up.
Lara: The book started out as just a list. A friend of mine was frustrated at trying to find a heel that would fit one of her children perfectly and was having a hard time telling exactly how deep, in rounds, a certain heel would be to knit. I said I could draw up a chart of sock heels for her and help her figure out that depth, based on the number of total stitches in the sock. I started out with the French heel, square heel, several afterthought heels and a few variations on the Common heel. I did a lot of algebra and knit a bunch of little sample heels. I said, "maybe I will do a pamphlet about this." Everyone in my knitting group said, "I think it sounds like a book!"
Allison: I remember that day! It was a few years ago, and only you could have taken that seed of an idea and used your passion and talent to turn it into a book. Awesome. So how did you start the whole research process?
Lara: I've always been interested in the history of knitting, so I went back to Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting and worked backwards from there. His library is online, so I started combing through those early knitting manuals. I kept reading the entire time I worked on the book, and actually found a few more heels than I could reasonably fit into one book. I'm starting notes for a second book right now.
In Weldon’s Practical Stocking Knitter from 1885, I found the Balbriggan heel, which is now one of my absolute favorites. It's very fast and easy to work, and fits very well if you don't have an extremely high arch. I also looked up Ethnic Socks & Stockings, by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, to make sure I was getting the full benefit of a heel I remembered reading about years before that can only really be worked from the toe up (I tried it top-down, but it was far too difficult to be practical), the Joined Heel Flap.
Along the way, I finished some ideas I had been reaching for in my own heels. I developed a short-row heel that has no wraps and doesn't gap at the turns. I love it because I can even work it in black yarn, in not-great light, and be confident that it will work out.
I also took the heels I created for my Tootsie socks in Knitty and the Touch of Silver AWE Socks I wrote for Crafty Living, which are different from each other but, I see in hindsight, are kind of working toward the same idea. I love the notion of taking a sock and working it in the way that is most convenient and fun at that moment. In those socks, and the two Procrastinatrix Socks patterns in Sock Architecture, you make the entire sock, including the gusset, before making the heel. You are free, then, to knit the sock either toe up or top down, and make the heel either toe up or top down. Since the heel is completely separate from the rest of the sock, if you ever want to pull it out and re-knit it, you can.
I'm interested in toes, too, and I tried to get a lot of variety in there. I tend to always make the same toes for myself and my wife, since we both have pretty wide feet. I designed sets of one shape of toe in the book - you can make them either short, medium or long depending on how your foot is shaped. When I first started making socks for Dee, a lot of times the toe was too narrow and that was very frustrating, so I wanted to give people options. My favorite heel/toe combination is always whatever one I'm working on at the moment. If I don't have a completely firm grasp on that particular heel and toe, I make a little note to myself with the numbers I need in my knitting bag.
Allison: Are the techniques in your book applied to your current sock-in-progress?
Lara: Right now, I'm working on a sock out of self-striping yarn that uses the afterthought Thumb-Joint Hat Top heel and toe. That's a mouthful, but it's a really simple concept. The heel/toe made it into the book, but I didn't have room or time to make a pattern for it.
The advantage of that particular heel in a self-striping sock yarn is that, with a very small amount of stripe management, you can have a perfectly uniform set of stripes all of the way down the front of the sock. The heel is automatically custom-fit to the wearer and it's much deeper than most afterthought heels, so it fits more like a standard flap-and-gusset sock. I really encourage anyone who hasn't loved afterthought heels in the past to try that one and fall in love with it. One of my proudest moments in the last year has been when I convinced one of my friends to try it. Now, she's an evangelist for that heel! I'm partnering with Simply Socks Yarn Company to release that pattern, so I don't have the details yet, but I'll share it on my blog (math4knitters.blogspot.com) when I do.
Allison: Did you have an idea of what you thought the whole writing/publishing process would be like beforehand? And if so, how did the actual process differ from what you were imagining?
Lara: This is my first book, and it was a great process, but very involved. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started, but my advice to anyone considering it is this - be prepared to invest a lot of time and effort! I knew I wanted a lot of sizes for the book, but if I had it to do over again, I would have asked
my tech editor for sizing guidelines before I wrote a single word. As it was, I had to do a lot of the work over again, from scratch, because her (much easier) method for sizing was almost completely different from mine. I also knew I wanted to include plug-in-your-numbers sizing to make the patterns completely
customizable. At first, I wrote those as entirely separate patterns. My editor said we just had to find a way to make it shorter. So, I ended up adding the adjustable instructions to each pattern as if it were just another size. I'm really happy with how that turned out, and I wouldn't have thought of it if she hadn't challenged me to find a way to be less long-winded.
I don't know how everyone does it, but with my editorial team, it worked like this:
1) I write the initial patterns/manuscript.
2) The tech editor takes a look and sends me notes.
3) I answer her notes/revise.
Repeat steps two and three a few times, until we both feel we have it worked out.
4) I send my updated patterns/manuscript to the editor for layout.
5) She sends a laid-out version to the tech editor.
Repeat steps two and three a few more times.
Repeat step 4.
6) We all review a final draft.
7) Publication!
Allison: Sounds like a lot of hard work for everyone! How many patterns have you written, outside of this book, and where can they be found?
Lara: Right now I have 185 patterns available on Ravelry. (http://www.ravelry.com/designers/lara-neel)
Most of them are free, and I should warn everyone that the ones I wrote for Crafty Living were definitely a part of my learning experience. They're not bad, exactly, but not all of them feel like a complete thought and none of them have multiple sizes.
Allison: Who benefits the most from your finished knitting?
Lara: I knit, mostly, for my wife, Dee. But, now that we've moved to Minnesota, I've started knitting socks for myself, too. I also knit a lot of holiday presents for family members and baby stuff for friends and charity.
Allison: And what do you knit the most?
Lara: For the last year and a half - socks, socks, and more socks. I love knitting sweaters, but I've become kind of addicted to turning out a pair of socks every 10 - 14 days. Sweaters take me at least a month. I have an afghan on the needles that has languished for about a year. It may be time to pull it out
and work on it.
Allison: I don't think I ever asked you this question, and it seems odd not to know... How'd you learn to knit?
Lara: I originally learned to knit when I was 6 at my after-school daycare. I didn't learn how to cast off or cast on, though, so I had to stop when I moved on from that particular place. I took it up again in college when I wanted something concrete to do to help me relax from working on my Physics degree. I
read every book on knitting I could find, and even used interlibrary loan to read just about all of the knitting books in Massachusetts. This was around 1999, so it was way before the knitting publication explosion that we're experiencing now. There were very few online resources, but the now-gone Woolworks: the online knitting compendium was one, and the very kind knitters there helped me when I got stuck.
Allison: The knitting community is so generous and has definitely made a difference in my life too. You, alone, have introduced me to some of my best friends and you even connected me with my shop-manager Heather. You're definitely missed in Fort Wayne. Tell me about the "day job" that got you to Dee to move to Minnesota.
Lara: I work as a social media manager at a book publisher, Quarto Publishing Group. One of our imprints is Voyageur Press, a name some knitters who pay attention to logos on the back of books may recognize. It's fascinating work and I'm learning a lot about the nuts and bolts of the publishing business. Basically, most of my job is to talk about books on the internet all day. I love it.
Allison: I'm really happy for you and Dee. Your book is fab, you have a great new job and house- what an exciting year! So let me pose a quandry. Picture this: Zombie Appocalypse. You and Dee are stuck in your house for a year with access to just three pattern books to do all your knitting. Which do you choose. I force you to choose your book as one of those.
Lara: For pattern books I would choose: Sock Architecture, Knitting from the Top by Barbara Walker, and Knitter's Alamanac by Elizabeth Zimmerman. For non-pattern books, I would choose: The Principles of Knitting by June Hemmons Hiatt, Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet (color inspiration galore!) and Knitting with Two Colors by Meg Swansen and Amy Detjen.
Allison: You're thinking outside the box. But I know it's what you do best. Who in the fiber industry keeps you inspired and thinking outside those walls?
Lara: I love Annie Modesitt. Her designs are as free-thinking and as fun as her personality. I feel real gratitude that she is my friend. Lucy Neatby and Cat Bordhi both also bring a sense of fun and excitement to everything they touch.
I have what I consider to be my nine muses of traditional knitting (in no particular order): Meg Swansen, Barbara Walker, Anna Zilboorg, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, June Hemmons Hiatt, Nancy Bush, Elizabeth
Zimmermann, Beth Brown-Reinsel and Mary Thomas. In their own ways, they have all illuminated and expanded the galaxy that is knitting. A knitter could really spend their entire knitting lives walking in these the footsteps of these women and continually learn new things.
Allison: Many thanks for creating this book for us. Really, it's beautiful, informative and a must-have resource. I'm honored that you exclusively used my shop's yarn for all the patterns, and I just can't wait to share it with everyone. And I do hope we can work together on something else in the future.
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If you want a chance at winning a signed copy of this great book, go here and look through the 17 patterns. Tell me in the comments below the one you'd choose to knit first. Then if you also want a chance at winning two skeins of Simply Sock Yarn Solids to knit your socks, tell me (in the same comment) which color you'd choose from the 60-some we offer. Leave your comment by this Friday, Sept 26 at noon EST. I'll randomly choose the winners and announce them here the following week. I'll also send out e-mails to the winners.