Meet the designer: Lucinda Ganderton

Speciality: Homewares and accessories

Favourite yarn: Anything by Jamieson’s of Shetland, especially Spindrift. I love the subtlety of the colour palette which encompasses traditional and contemporary shades, and they all blend together so well.

Favourite local yarn shop: I Knit London is cool, friendly and I can always find an interesting or unusual yarn there.

Knitting since: It’s been so long that I can’t remember actually learning how! My mother was an art teacher and my grandmother a dressmaker, so my sister and I (now an accessories designer living in NYC) spent our childhood making things.

First knitting project: A scarf for Rupert, my teddy bear.

Perfect day: A lie-in, fresh coffee, family, sunshine, beachcombing, drawing, talking, lunch out, music… 

Guilty pleasure: Buying too many plants for the garden!

Favourite song: New York Morning by Elbow, which reminds me of staying with my sister in Manhattan and of taking my son Alex to his first grown-up gig.

Favourite dessert: I feel I should say fresh fruit salad, but really it’s lemon cheesecake.

Favourite colour: Blue, in every shade from azure or cornflower to denim and Prussian blue (which is actually grey).

Favourite pattern designed for Let’s Knit: A handbag called Wallace, inspired by a 1930s portrait of the Duke of Windsor wearing a Fair Isle pullover. It’s knitted in Jamieson’s wool, trimmed and lined with tweed, and has leather handles.  I like combining old and new themes to make something a bit vintage and quirky.

Favourite television show to knit to: Downton Abbey, every time. And my favourite film, by the way, has to be The Edge of Love, the Dylan Thomas biopic, which has some of the best knitwear in any movie wardrobe!

Favourite gift to knit: Baby bootees, especially my baby sneakers design, which are for babies with attitude.  My cousin is expecting a boy soon, and I’m going to make black and white ones for him.

Best knitting memory: Finishing off the first proper garment I ever made when I was 16, and then wearing it to sixth form college.  It was an Aran jumper with a wheatsheaf design on the front.

Best knitting tip: My Great Aunt Grace told me to always darn in the ends as you go. It saves a lot of time when you’re making up.

Biggest knitting disaster: I once bought some very expensive chenille yarn to knit a complicated Rowan jumper with lots of bobbles, cables and textures. I got a bit bored after doing the back and it languished at the back of the wardrobe for five years.  By then I couldn’t face completing it, so made the finished panel into a cushion front and took the rest of the yarn to Oxfam. But the cushion made me feel so guilty for giving up on the jumper, that it ended up at the charity shop as well!