#41 Joji's Journal

[Music] hi hello everyone today's Wednesday September 11 2009 teen and I just checked YouTube and this is journal number 41 which is kind of amazing I didn't think I'd be still recording this journals I thought I was going to chicken out and stop recording a long time ago but I'm still happy to do so I'm not happy about my hair as always I think I just spent five minutes pushing it down before hitting the record button and I still don't know what to do with my fringe I think I want to grow it out that's why it's so long over my face like that but I'm also maybe not ready to come bit to the side so that's that not wearing any makeup today which also doesn't help my capability of being satisfied with my own image but that's that I hope you are all very well today is a chilly day I've been having a quieter week so far and this Wednesday in Argentina we celebrate teachers day so my kids don't have school teachers get the day off in remembrance of this former president who brought free education to Argentina and therefore my kids are upstairs and my husband went to the supermarket to do the grocery shopping so I thought I don't know I just thought I would record a quick Journal today it's not going to be so long because last time mom and I talked about a lot of things and hopefully to keep the the flow of the journal moving I thought I would record more often to also motivate me to work and to get things ready to show to you guys so this week I have a new pattern out thank you so much for everyone who supported that pattern it's called the farm twist jacket it's over here and if you have been a longtime friend of the journal that means that you have seen this pattern and this watch many times I think I swatch for this jacket I don't know how long ago but long time ago and it only came through this year and then when I was ready for with this design it was the wrong season to publish it so I decided to wait until the fall also test knitting took a long a long time because it's quite an elaborate pattern so anyway it's out this is my newest pattern it's called the farm twist jacket and I it's a very unoriginal name farm tweet is the name of the yarn that I used from Madeline Tosh it's a DK weight yarn and the colorway that I used is called pavement and I back when I was knitting and designing on this I talked about this pattern a lot and why I was having problems or difficulties knitting it and then writing it and grading it but since I haven't talked about it in a very long time I think I can do that today so this pattern begins at the neckline so you cast on the stitches for the front and the back and also you cast on stitches I don't remember how many they are but I think it's eight stitches for these shoulder cables and then you work everything in one piece so the front and the back grow because you start increasing stitches at each side of this cable this cable piece so as you can see we have different cable motives we have a vine we have six sides we have cables and twisted stitches and then pines again so what happens is that me as the pattern writer as you increase stitches here at the shoulder section I need to tell you what to do with each of these new stitches as you can see I increase the stitch here that then becomes a twisted stitch so with each row I need to tell you each stitch what it will become and how you should need each one of these new stitches there are other ways in which I could have done this I could have for example told you to increase maybe ten stitches like repeat these directions until you have ten stitches in this section and then work a new cable but then it would look a bit like all of the tables are chopped off the top of the cables is chopped off and I didn't want that I wanted the cables to emerge from the shoulder slope also I could have done the shoulder shaping in a different stitch pattern I could have done the shoulder shaping for example in garter stitch or in stockinette stitch sometimes I do that it looks like you have a stripe here and then when you finish with all the shoulder shaping you start with the patterning right but for this design in particular in my mind I had all lower cables I wanted cables everywhere I didn't want any interruptions in the fabric so as you can imagine for my thighs the shoulder instructions took something like did 50 rows of stitch by stitch instructions when you are knitting it from the pattern I don't think it's so complicated because basically all you like your brain knows that everything that you have to happen to pay attention to is whatever happens to these stitches that are actually at each side of this central cable so you only pay attention to those fragments of the row that actually give you a new direction the rest of the row is basically knitting pattern but for me writing that took a lot of work and then usually for those interested my process goes like this I don't write my pattern before starting I just have an idea example this is mine one of my notebooks for ideas I usually write stuff down like that and then I maybe I draw let's see new this thing that I'm working on sometimes I draw an arrow something like that so to indicate the direction as you can see I am marking here was the provisional cast-on or live stitches and I do all these kinds of notes then I make some notes on my notebook about stitch counts and things that I have to take into consideration when I start and then I write my pattern as I go so it's row by row instructions that I write in this case I didn't use a notebook for the front wrist jacket for the row by row instructions because I could already see how long each row was going to be and what I did was I was copying and pasting the instructions from the previous rows and then adding the new stitches or the new directions that corresponding to every new that I was adding but I finished my sample I finished kneading my sample with a draft that is only in my size so I basically only wrote the instructions for the medium size and then I do all the work of grading those instructions into lots of different sizes right so there are some things that you can foresee when you are writing when you are knitting sorry so when you are knitting your own sample you can already when you're writing your own sample you can already foresee that this is going to be hard to transform into multiple sizes because the directions are so specific to these particular sites that trying to take or add centimeters or inches to this bag is going to be a lot of work so that's what happened with this design as I said in my mind I wanted this design to be all over cables for me and for all of the sizes so what happened as you can see the cables go up to the sides of this jacket and in order to make this jacket wider of course I can add some panels of like stockinette stitch or texture stitches I do that with a lot of designs but it didn't work for what I had in mind for this particular design for this design I wanted cable so that means that for the size large for example I can add a few purl stitches here and it won't make a great difference but for the size extra large I need to already add another cable or perhaps another six that right so for each size I need to add a different amount of cables or vines or and also my size is the third times in my scales over the size extra small and extra small I don't have enough room to have this buying here right so also grading down it's quite a challenge so basically what happened was I created two sets of sizes so my size along with the extra small small and large have pieced back neck with and then there's another set of sizes from extra large to five extra-large that have a slightly slightly wider neckline not a lot wider but they have another cable running down the back neck but also I wrote instructions for a very long very long slope a very long slope so maybe this wide and then I told different sizes to stop the directions okay stop the directions that row a row here for the extra small a row here for the small here for the medium here for the large etc etc right so I everyone has the instructions for a very long shallow slope but different sizes must stop the directions sooner or later according to how many cables they need to have in their in their sweater I hope this is not too boring I just find I just find knitting designs so interesting and I know many times I design really simple sweaters that are super easy to knit and to design but then when something challenges me I get really excited about the ways that I solved the problem and I know that maybe some designers might get ideas like oh maybe I can use that to solve this or that so I like sharing some of their behind the scenes also so that's how I wrote this pattern I have to separate the instructions in two PDFs so those sizes with the narrower neckline are one PDF and then the larger sizes with the wider neckline are separate PDF what else yeah and that's that it took a lot of work and a lot of patience from my test knitters to go through these long documents need samples out of them but I think we did a good job my my technical editor Kate she did also a really great job finding things that I didn't take into consideration when writing yeah so I hope you like it I'm gonna insert some photos of this at the beginning of the video so you probably saw that as you can see it slightly cropped it slightly boxy is the shape that I'm very comfortable wearing and I think it goes nicely with clothes that are a bit looser and sometimes when I'm wearing very loose layers I don't want to another jacket that it's also very long and very loose because then it just doesn't look so well for for my taste or for whatever the trend is now I know cropped jackets are more trendy right now so I'm influenced by that too so I honestly have been wearing this jacket all winter we took the photos for this pattern back in April beginning of April so that I could actually wear the jacket without ruining it so yeah so that's my featured pattern of the week I have an F oh but I left it upstairs so I'm gonna go get that and be right back okay I finished SEVIS socks by the way thank you everyone who sent me comments about my mom's health and her participation in the video she was feeling really poorly during that video and she was feeling a lot better by that evening we really pampered her we made chicken soup for her and Teddy my youngest was doing all the cuddling so by the time she by the time I drove her home she was reading alright anyway during our live video that we recorded about ten days ago I told everyone that it was a Sunday and on Monday my youngest son seve he was going to go on a school trip and I was making some socks for him and I was really I was working on the second sock and I think I was up to here maybe when I showed them and I was not sure I was going to make it but I wanted to show him that I was committed to making something that he could take he could take on a trip but I made it I finished his pair of socks and he took them on history I stayed up very late finishing them and he couldn't go to sleep he's all sweet he kept checking on me and asking me if I was done and he kept reassuring me saying things like okay don't worry if you cannot make them but then she kept coming to check if I was done with them he's so sweet and then I think it was about midnight so I sneaked into his room to put his socks next to his bed so he would find them in morning and I think like I might have made like breathing noise or something so he turns around in kids but he was still awake and says did you finish those yes so he was super happy he woke up in the morning he was wearing his socks and then he left for camp for it was only three days guys it was not that bad but every time he goes away I miss him so much anyway for saving socks I used sweet georgia tough soap here in the top is almost a black colorway and I'm pretty sure this color is called called cauldron and then for the red portions I use the plucky knitter primo fingering in the colorway pucker up and if the cashmere it holds up well in the top but as you can see the bottom of the sock is already very peeling I just dip held it a bit so that they wouldn't be so disgusting because my kids walk barefoot on their socks so and they go outside and everything so they are full of matter uh-huh so anyway this was a huge accomplishment for me I was meeting at the time two projects for my kids Nano sweater and service socks and I don't know it just made me feel really good to be able to finish this in time to give them to CBN I don't need to prove my love to my children but sometimes I need to prove myself that I'm also investing time in personal knitting projects which is really important because knitting is my job but it's also my therapy so I need to be mindful and make time for those things I keep checking on my orchid I know you guys have seen her of times in my journal and I have four four you know I have several orchids three of them are in blooming season so this was a Phalaenopsis that was blooming for but it wasn't bloom maybe for three months I had her flowers here and now she's finally done and she has decided that it's time to go rest so I'm letting her do her thing but I'm kind of sad that she's not hearing this in the scene anymore and then I have another orchid that I will insert the photo here that I keep looking at when I worked I faced my garden it's a huge thing vedyam I think she's five years so this is her fourth blooming season and every season she gives more and bigger flowers which is amazing then I also have another Phalaenopsis that has been trying to bloom for months but it's still in the process of like creating that stem that holds the flowers so I think I still have to wait for her for a bit more okay that's my finished object for today I have three works in progress no I have a finished start to finish object that I want to show you it's almost finished but not completely it's in my be a bag and oh guys just second my phone is right that was my husband who's doing grocery shopping asking me about what coffee I want so this is the show that I have been working on the bubble shawl I'm using yarn by yarn experiments Monica from yarn experiments died these two colorways inspired by Argentina this is her monkey sock bass is a fingering weight merino nylon blend and this colorway is called merienda this colorway me is called Rosario and okay I finished the body of the show and I was going to block today but then I thought I always have my stuff blocking when I want to record so I left it to block when I finished this journal and then next time you see this is going to be when I published the pattern so you're going to see it unblocked and then as a finished pattern so here it is a super super love it it was an experiment using bubbles in a different color and also I wanted it to have sort of like like the look of some woven blankets that I have been seen in Pinterest I added sort of like bubble rounds or circles here in the bottom as you can see this is a lot of bubbles so I don't know if I want to like work on more bubbles soon I might be taking a break from bubbling for a while and I'm also planning to add a little fringe and I still haven't decided I think I want to add to fringe so I'm gonna try and see how it looks like if I add a short fringe here in this beige band and then a beige fringe at the bottom we'll see I don't know if I have a lot of yarn to have a fringe but if it's not too long it should be enough I always like to have enough yarn leftover to ensure that people who make this pattern will have enough yarn to complete their own sample but I think I'm safe with that amount so it's a crescent it's very long it will be longer when I block it and I just love having a little bubbles wrapped around my neck like that I'm really excited about this new design I hope you'll all like it when it's ready and yeah so that's that this is for reference five months old five month old yeah a bit more five month old ba ba from our back company Hokkien company and it's hosting two skein project wave plenty of room to spare um okay next working progress I it's actually on hold for a while it's Nana's sweater that I talked about last time I told you guys I was blocking it i reblogged it I kind of erased what was going on here on the sides with these diagonal lines and it all looks very neat now I know it doesn't show so much on the screen so now what I have to do is I have to pick up stitches and work on the sleeves which you can tell by my face how excited I am to work on the sleeves for a man-sized sweater how shocked I am that I have a man-sized son but I'm probably going to work on the mass that I need to cast on the sleeves and then I will be able to work on these when I want some things to think something that I don't have to think a lot and I I think I don't know if you watch our last YouTube video but I talked about how I don't feel confident enough to write a patent for this because there's something wrong with the side paneling and I just don't think the design is good enough it's definitely good enough for my kid but sadly I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you but I don't think this is going to become a finish publish this one so that's that so a lot of projects that won't become defined and this is also a project that won't become a design so I want to show you some very own socks that are some of them one of my favorite pairs of socks so these are the socks that I'm talking about I recently read need the toes for these socks using the same yarn that I use for my farm to check it so I'm showing you these socks because I'm trying to replicate them slightly differently but almost the same and these socks are made out of 100% alpaca yarn this yarn I purchased in 2014 I went to Portland Oregon for work to teach and on the last day my friend Carol and Gayle we drove up to Mount Hood and we saw during our road trip we saw a sign that said alpaca farm like we didn't know there was another packet from there so we just follow the signs and then we ended up in this farm I think we clapped or call for someone and then they came and opened the door the gate for us and turns out that this farm was a big help on a farm and they were creating their own yarns they gave us a demonstration they had spinning material and yarns it was fantastic we got to see all the alpacas and play with them completely unexpected during that visit of course I wanted to support the business so I purchased one of their skeins of alpaca I think it was worsted weight Ataka probably like a hundred and fifty gram skein I don't think it had a tag or yardage or anything and as soon as I came home I cast on some songs I didn't know what else to knit with the yarn sometimes alpaca is a bit itchy on my head so for a hat for my forehead I thought that it could have been a bit itchy and I don't really wear mittens where I am from so I decided to make some socks and I thought whatever if they don't last long I don't care it's gonna be fine turns out that these socks have been in constant rotation since 2014 15 so they are 4 years old at least and they are just fine and actually when this socks broke was broke like they could a hole in the merino nylon section of the socks and not on the alpaca section of the socks I have to be honest with you I have shaved these socks twice last time I shake them was probably in March when he started getting up colder so that I was going to wear them again so I shaved them because the sole of the socks was a bit pili and they didn't look so great I don't mind that they look like a big fuzzy ball of sock but it just had a lot of pills and and if you look at the inside of the sock you can see that the heel is completely felted which is adorable it just you put your feet in there and it's just amazing warmth they are not too sick guys I hiked in these socks when it's really cold I was kidding these socks I don't ski in this up so much mostly because 14 I prefer longer socks to protect me more against the harm caused by the ski boot but sometimes I don't have clean longer socks and I just wear these and they're amazingly warm my feet have never been cold with our package ops so I have yarn that I have purchased to make another pair for me because I don't think that anyone else gets their feet as cold as I do so this yarn I'm making them slightly shorter because I have the suspicion that I won't have enough yarn to make them as long I don't know why I haven't weighed them I probably should weigh them and see but I have a suspicion that this won't be enough for the same length of yeah anyway in 2016 I went to New York with my husband and we were saying there we went to Rhinebeck and I think that because I started meeting that Rhinebeck season is coming and I remember the only time that I was there I remember that trip and I remember that I have been Tuni TCT which is a yarn store in New York and I didn't want to buy just any yarn without a purpose I do that all the time but this time I was trying to be more focused on okay only buy something you really want to make and you guys the only thing I could think that I really wanted to make was another pair of those alpaca socks so I thought if a tiger which is now sadly discontinued is called frog three alpaca and and I got two skeins of these this was at the time $8.00 per ball so it wasn't super cheap but it just meant that I bought yarn that I came home with that I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it so I've cast on for my socks as you can see I've already divided for the heel flap so they are going to be shorter they're going to be like an inch shorter than the original pair and the color is quite similar maybe I'll have enough to make the toast with alpaca also because what happened with these pair is that I didn't have enough yarn to complete the toes and yes yes and I'm using two point five millimeter needles this is a sport weight alpaca it says 100% alpaca sport weight suggested needle us five to six so that's 3.75 to 4 millimeters it's 50 grams of alpaca and 130 yards so it is not a lot of yardage for a sport weight Sokka is really heavy and I am using two point five millimeter needles for my socks because I want them to be kind of dense it hasn't moved super dense though and as you can see my ribbing sort of sucks it's horrible but it's my ribbing guys it's the best I can do and what else yes and I'm using 54 stitches so the top of the sock is one by one ribbing and the body of the leg of the sock or the main pattern is two by one ribbing yeah so this is living in my beautiful field back by fringe company which I love this I don't know what I need got it dirty with it's not water some probably spit something on me probably wine it's probably why I never got around to cleaning it though I know that I talked about washing it here in the journal I asked for recommendations I never washed it I don't know if I will but I use this little bag all the time too yeah so those are no no sorry I have another work-in-progress so I finally started the lacy cardigan that I talked about during last you know so this is the beginning this cardigan is going to be sorry this cardigan is going to be sideways so this is actually the bottom or the the bottom of the back or the bottom of the front I haven't decided yet in which direction I will need it and yes so I'm using different lace patterns I don't have the swatch with me but I've searched a couple of different lace patterns so it's going to be sort of like a sampler style I'm using something new here as the edging I'm doing some red stitches but also I'm and adding an icord edge so that my stitches look neater so I think it's working out really well yeah so basically this is what it's going to look like from the path but I don't think I can show you yet more details maybe when it grows I can explain better how it will work the four little long is going great next time I record a journal I will talk about all the sponsors that we have because I haven't been able to put that together properly and I want to give everyone a nice shout out and lastly I wanted to share with you if you don't mind a new product that I will be launching next week for coffee and company which is ready finally I have a finished prototype for this so let me tell you the story of this I own set of higher higher interchangeable needles that look like this these are the tips and of course I've got cables that go with those and they come with their own with their own case and I've owned this set for now okay mine it picks set is about ten years old and then my higher highest set is probably four to five years old I've never lost any of these tips or any of these cables and I know it's because high higher has an nice case that comes with the set nice as in function but I have to be honest with you I never liked the case I never really liked the way the case looks this is just sometimes I'm very picky with the things that I use and carry around it's not because it's not because I think that other people having this case you know I don't when I see it on someone else I don't think it looks ugly I don't think it's ugly it just doesn't go with some of the things that I carry around and it was a blue on pattern case and I kept thinking I I would love to have something that that looks like a wallet to put my needles and I love the option that higher higher has because their set is quite compact so their case was actually like a square like this be a square in fabric I don't think it protected the needles too much because it was just fabric it didn't have any like solid or firm material around the needles but every time I have to travel I just put that set in my suitcase that takes no space and I know that I have any needle that I can need during my trip if I want to work ribbing and change my needle if I want to anything I want to need I have my set of higher higher with me so I carry it around all the time and every time I opened my bag or my suitcase I saw the bright blue case and I didn't like it so when we studied Hokkien company with my friends and we finished our first project bag to be a bag I said you know what I would love to have next I would love to have a wallet that has this function and we've been working on this needle case for since April we've made a lot of a lot of prototypes there was always something wrong with one of them and eventually we have now a finished prototype so I'm going to show you two prototypes that didn't make the cut this was the first prototype as you can see I wanted something to cover the needles when you place them here on these lots I wanted something to keep the needles from falling but also I don't like those cases that have the flap that then when I rolled them the flap sort of makes this and I cannot I kind of really keep it in place so I asked them to add these little snaps so that when I open my case I actually don't see my needles it looks really like wallet this case now is holding my needles inside it and you cannot see them so here are my needles as you can see this prototype also didn't make the cut but I always keep a prototype that we cannot sell so this is my middle case what was wrong with this first prototype is that it looked neat but I didn't like this padded finish and also I felt that the leather wasn't protective of the needles enough I felt that when I put it in my purse the wallet tended to do that and I wanted something that was a bit more firm and also for this first prototype the artisan didn't fully understand what we wanted so we also wanted the case to have a space to put your cables and accessories without taking extra room right so we didn't want another another flap for accessories we wanted it to be as compact as we could so we designed these hidden pockets that go behind your needles so for the first prototype they maker didn't really understand what we were going for and as you can see my fingers in there so the pockets are really small for the cables and also there's like a back piece of leather there that was not very like when I wanted to put my needles there it kept they kept getting stuck against that layer of fabric so we modified this prototype we made two prototypes in between that one and this one I don't have those the workshop has those but then this was almost the final one but we decided not to go with the white stitching so when you see the finished product you won't see this white stitching that I have in my case but as you can see we have two pockets hidden back there in one of them I store all my cables it's really deep like it goes all the way it goes all the way up now and so the book is is actually two pockets with one zipper to take less space and the zippers meet here at the middle and here I have another pocket where I keep stitch markers and stuff that I might need one of them just decided to leave stuff that I might leave when I traveled so I packed everything here and I just chose it as a wallet and this is my little case this is all I take when I travel and I have all my notions and my needles in one place needless to say I am you know guys I'm crazy for compact stuff I don't like I lie I love practical stuff that it's compact minimal it took us a long time and several attempts but we are super happy with our finished interchangeable needle wallet and these are the two colors that we will have it available in so black black and beige rage because black yeah so the black is ultra black with a brass snaps and zippers and the beige is ultra page with also rank position the zippers properly there you go we have initially made a prototype with needle numbers so we had added the u.s. needle numbers 2 3 4 vara but then we realized that maybe you want to use this for different type of needles like crochet hooks or short double pointed needles or maybe use your set doesn't have all of these sizes so it was more confusing than it was helpful so which has left of the engraving for the needle sizes and there's room to hold 10 pairs of tips needle tips these needle interchangeable needle wallets will go on will be up for sale in our website possibly this Friday I don't want to guarantee that we have a limited amount and we are hoping to see if you guys like them then we will make more we know that not everyone uses interchangeable needles as I do we are trying to work on a solution for fixed circular needles we haven't found yet one that we like but we're working on one and basically what we want to know is if people are really into this kind of accessories because they are a lot more difficult to make they are probably more expensive than project bugs because there are so many small leather parts that need to be sewn in very specific ways so we're trying out we're excited to launch a proper new product finally to our website so we you can check it out not to buy it go check it out go show it some love you can follow our accessory company at Hokey & Co no it's coffee needs calm / shop and it's at Hokkien co on instagram so with that I'm gonna leave you guys until next week please let me know if you have any questions if you like me to talk about something in particular for next journal let me know if you like this shorter and I know if it's shorter but to me it feels shorter than other episodes and hopefully it see you next week bye [Music]

Channel: Joji Locatelli

Views: 12,577

Rating: 4.9482203 out of 5

Keywords: jojilocatelli knittingpodcast podcast knitting knitter joji ravelry knttingjournal

Id: G3Muz6PNUc0

Length: 50min 44sec (3044 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019