Kristen Rengren is a long-time collector of vintage clothing and ephemera and a former vintage clothing dealer. Her work as a knitwear designer and author is inspired and informed by her vast collection of vintage knitting patterns, including thousands of patterns spanning from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Kristen has designed vintage-inspired patterns for Interweave Knits, Vogue Knitting, Blue Sky Alpacas, and Vermont Organic Fiber Company. Her book Vintage Baby Knits (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, April 2009), which updated over forty vintage patterns from the 1920s through the 1950s, received widespread acclaim. In December 2009, Kristen plans to launch a line of independently published original patterns for adults and children, available at her website and for download on Ravelry.

Kristen learned to knit in 1994, when a friend taught her to give them both something to do during a long Lithuanian winter. Her first project was a pair of fair isle gloves, but because no one mentioned that they would not be an ideal project for beginners, they weren't finished until the next summer.

Previous to her discovering both vintage clothing and designing in 2004, Kristen was variously a development director for a major university and for several experimental theater companies, the director of a major cultural festival bringing together Eastern European artists and their American counterparts, and a professional puppeteer.

Kristen lives in Chicago with her husband, two cats, and more yarn than she cares to admit. She blogs about vintage knits, designing, and cake at http://www.retroknit.net/blog/.