 Growing up, my mom was an art teacher, and she definitely always encouraged creative thinking and creativity as a part of our lives and was really not only fostered that but encouraged it, obviously by just embracing sort of whatever creative endeavors we were up to. And it was the type of thing where I could find something on the playground like a piece of garbage and bring it home and say, look what I found and she would be like, let's make it into something. When I finally went to college, I went to Middlebury College and I was not an art major and that wasn't my aim going to college either. I was a sociology and anthropology major with a minor in studio art but that minor in studio art was comprised of a sort of random survey of various art classes from painting to printmaking. But again, I was interested in exploring those creative options and trying to find an outlet for me but not necessarily seeing it as a professional path for myself. And then once I graduated from college, my first job was at a graphic design studio in Burlington, Vermont called Jagger-Dapolla Kemp Design, but I was hired as an account manager. But after being there for a little while, I realized that I wanted to be more hands-on and that I wanted to be like one of the creatives who actually got to make what they were doing and execute the vision of the client in a creative way. I had done a costuming course at Middlebury and I loved it, telling a story through clothing and really getting into what was true to the character and what they wanted to get across with their clothing. I realized that I didn't want an art school experience, I wanted a real trade school experience and I found that the School of Fashion Design Boston provided that for me and that's where I went to learn pattern making and draping and proper construction, tailoring all the things that really go into making woven garments. I didn't do any knitwear at that point. In between my first and second years at school for design, I got an internship with Nanette LePore who's a women's clothing designer in New York, contemporary women's clothing designer, and I went to New York for the summer and worked for her. So when I came back to school for my second year, I was given the opportunity, sort of the door was left open to come back and help her at showtime and the time leading up to shows and as much as I could do and once I completed school, I wanted to stay in Boston for a little bit to try doing my own thing. So I had a small woven collection called Judith and I was doing everything from drafting the patterns to making the test garments to then selling the garments and once they were sold, someone, if a store wanted a full size run, I made the full size run, everything. I just, at that point, wasn't, I was so enamored with the process just being new to it, I think, that I wasn't willing to let any component go. I think I've always liked knits. My grandmother was a huge knitter and owned a knit shop in Lake Placid and I actually have a knitting machine, a hand flat knitting machine, and I can hand knit but basically just a scarf. I'm not a strong knitter necessarily but through experience now, I really understand knitwear and I can talk to you about how it's made and how to make it. Since we moved here, I've been freelancing for a baby knitwear collection. It's babies through kids called Bambino and then we do private label for Barney's New York. So that's what I do now. I draw inspiration from everything through street style, through obviously the internet and blogs but tons of magazines. I'm a magazine hoarder and I have boxes of tear sheets that are old magazines. I read a lot of nonfiction and I sort of get wrapped up with those people and their full life and imagining the types of clothing they would wear or actually seeing it. I think obviously vintage and old construction techniques and thinking specifically like with knits referencing traditional woven construction techniques and thinking about how we can translate those into knitwear. Moving forward, I hope to continue to grow my knowledge of knitwear and I hope to also maybe have the opportunity to get back to doing some woven again because that is something since I can make it from start to finish that feels different than with the knitwear where I'm not knitting what I'm actually designing.