photo: Lisanne and Bryce Thomas

Born in New Jersey, Amy R Singer has spent most of her life in Canada and likes it there.

A professional editor and proofreader in the advertising industry
since 1986, Amy used to think she was wasting away the Bachelor's
degree in Radio & Television Arts she earned at Ryerson
University. But in 2006, she quit her day job and is now wasting away her degree with a career in knitting, as a full-time writer, and editor of the online knitting magazine Knitty.

Thanks to the gentle patience of her grandma Lillian, Amy learned to knit when she was 6. She vaguely remembers creating large, shapeless blobs of garter stitch, but has managed to block out the details. Allergic to wool and insanely sensitive to most animal fibers, she has cultivated an intense appreciation for non-wool yarns. If you ask her what she's coveting now, she'll tell you that nothing turns her crank like a skein of hand-dyed silk from Handmaiden.

In the summer of 2002, Amy launched Knitty, a web-only knitting magazine with a sense of humor and absolutely no doily patterns. In the fall of 2006, Knitty welcomed its twenty-millionth visitor. She also writes a column for Interweave Knits magazine and keeps an blog on their website about knitting and the internet.

Her third book, No Sheep for You: Knit Happy with Cotton, Silk,
Linen, Hemp, Bamboo and Other Delights, launches in spring 2007
from Interweave Press.

She also is the author of Knit Wit (HarperResource, 2004) and Big Girl Knits, co-written with her friend Jillian Moreno (Potter Craft, 2006). She is a contributor to Knitting Yarns and Spinning Tales, edited by Kari Cornell
(Voyageur Press, 2005) and Knitgrrl 2 by Shannon Okey (Watson-Guptil, 2006).

Other obsessions include sporadic attempts at fitness with flat-water kayak or touring bike, and collecting vintage stuff. And spinning silk hankies on her growing collection of drop spindles.

Amy lives in Toronto with her husband, Philip, and their two mini-rex rabbits, Boeing and Squeeze.