We were lucky to catch up with Ruth Nguyen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ruth thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

My mom and dad always gave me space to “color outside the lines”. Whether that was homeschooling me and debating Aristotle with me at the dinner table, or getting me voice lessons when nobody else in our family sang, or supporting all the wild projects I dove headfirst into over the years. I tend to be a bit uptight and cautious by nature, but I can’t count the number of times I brought them a crazy idea and they said, “You have nothing to lose—go for it and see if it works.”.

When I was seven years old, I randomly told them I wanted to learn how to knit after I saw a teenager in our family’s book study group doing it—so they paid her to teach me. They didn’t know where it was going to lead, but their openness took away any sense of fear on my part about learning something new. And that fearlessness gave me the impetus to start my business fresh out of high school, using those same knitting skills they’d paid for me to get years before. Since then, I’ve published 65 patterns and sold thousands of copies, appeared on podcasts, and worked as a Designer in Residence for premier hand-dyed yarn company SweetGeorgia Yarns. Every opportunity that’s come my way has been a gift, and I don’t know if I would have taken any of them if my parents hadn’t given me the confidence to “just try it”.

Even now, when my projects and plans have far more risk attached, the way they raised me has taken a massive weight off my shoulders. I’m able to assess that risk and navigate it head-on, rather than shying away from the unorthodox or unfamiliar. A few years after starting my knitting pattern business, I approached them about my hopes for a different long-term path—writing novels. Which is the kind of career choice that tends to make even the most supportive parents cringe a little bit. But my parents sat down with me, helped me come up with a plan, and—you guessed it—told me to go for it. Now, thanks to their support (and the money I earned through the knitting & crochet business they helped me start), I’m preparing to graduate from The Author Conservatory, an elite training program for gifted writers, and already have gotten interest in my novel manuscripts from literary agents. I have a path forward in my dream career field, and as competitive and challenging as it’s going to be, I couldn’t be more excited. And I know my parents have my back 110%. (I also plan to keep knitting, because who says you can only do one thing that brings you joy?)

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a freelance knitting & crochet pattern designer, which is kind of like being a recipe writer. I develop instructions and tutorials for crafters to be able to make everything from scarves and mittens to sweaters, and sell those instructions as pdfs. My patterns are designed to bridge the gap between basic beginner projects and expert ones—I want my customers to have the satisfaction of completing a garment they didn’t realize they had the skills to make, that’s also beautiful and wearable in their everyday lives. I’m proudest of all the collaborations I’ve gotten to be a part of—the yarn industry is chock-full of incredibly talented creatives and lovely human beings, and getting to work with them is one of my favorite things about being in this business.

Joy is the heart of my brand—I want for every person who picks up one of my patterns to have an absolute blast making it! That impacts everything from the design process to the way I format my instructions, to the events I choose to participate in and direct other crafters to. I only design things I’d have fun making if it was someone else’s pattern. And I want all my customers to feel the same pride in their work that I want to feel when I finish a project: for them to be able to put on what they made from one of my patterns and never want to take it off.

I’ve also come to believe in the restorative power of knitting and crochet over the years. The repetitive motions and creative outlet of watching art take shape in your hands truly are soothing to the soul, especially in a world that’s often chaotic and stressful. And I design to create that little oasis of peace and sanity for my customers—which loops back into my mission to provide patterns that are straightforward, satisfying, and fun. This craft is more than string and pointy sticks—it’s about creating order and beauty in a disordered world. And that’s what gets me most excited.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

Email marketing is the #1 way to keep in touch with your clients over the long haul. With how fickle social media algorithms are (and how draining it can be to maintain a curated social media presence), you can lose contact with even loyal fans at the drop of a hat. Whereas email gives you a direct line to them, and it’s much more personal since you can interact one on one with them. More experienced colleagues told me to get my email list up and running as soon as possible, even before starting my social media and website, and I wish I’d done it sooner like they suggested. It’s a game changer.

As far as brand loyalty goes, it’s really not complicated—just be a decent human being. Treat your customers right. Value their input. Make it clear with your actions that you value them and their presence, and that you see their needs. That doesn’t mean being a doormat; be safe and protect your boundaries, by all means. But within that, there’s so much room to communicate to people that you see them as human beings and to connect at that level.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve had to unlearn perfectionism more times than I can count (it’s a slippery little beast that keeps slithering back into my thinking when I’m not looking). My first big encounter with it was smack in the middle of COVID. I’d planned a pattern collection that involved a massive collaboration with multiple well-known yarn dyers, and scheduled it to launch in the summer of 2020. It was my first solo pattern collection and I was pretty much unknown in the industry, so I was stunned that the dyers agreed to be involved and send hundreds of dollars’ worth of free yarn for me to create samples with. But then the pandemic happened, everyone was scrambling, and I realized that between upheaval in my own life and challenges others (such as my beta testers) were experiencing due to the pandemic, I wasn’t going to be able to pull off the collection on the original timeline. So I shame-facedly emailed every one of my collaborators and told them I was going to have to push the collection release date back to later in the year. As it turned out, they were all as kind and understanding as could be, but getting over that hump of admitting to them that things weren’t going to go as planned was one of the scarier things I’ve had to do as a business owner.

Four years later, and some of the patterns from that collection are my bestsellers to this day, so it worked out!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://redearthdesignstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redearthdesignstudio/
• Other: https://www.ravelry.com/designers/ruth-nguyen

  https://payhip.com/redearthdesignstudio

Image Credits

Ruth Nguyen