Joji's Knitting Journal #55

[Music] hi hello welcome to another spontaneous edition of my knitting journal my name is joji and this is my blog for all my knitting and today's friday september 2nd 2021 and i am happy and surprised that i have the time to record this i am about to live to the us hopefully if everything goes well i will be leaving the country in just a couple of hours and i normally pack the day we leave the country because i used to have so much experience packing that i could do it in a couple of hours for me and my entire family but for this trip i've been a little bit more stressed than usual a little bit more nervous and so i started packing yesterday and i finished so i looked at the clock and i realized that i had three hours before it's time to go to the airport and i thought what a perfect time to come here below this video before leaving or [Music] sometime when i'm away so yeah it's been a great week lots of emotions i hope that the week ends the same way i published i just published a small collection of patterns on wednesday september 1st and those were patterns that if you are a regular viewer then you had seen them all i had shown the progress for all of those here in the journal in the podcast but perhaps it's the first time you join me so um you probably saw those for the first time on ravelry those patterns were not born as a collection they were not designed to be together but somehow um somehow they were waiting for me i shared my feelings about photography and my fear of getting my work out there lately maybe for the past two and a half years i think since the beginning of 2019 or march 2019 i've been feeling really insecure about the things that i design i have analyzed it i've i've done therapy about it it has to do with many things and um some of those things are out of our control sometimes we just can't handle the fear and i i realized that i kept pushing designs that were finished and designs that i really liked and felt proud of just because there was a step or two missing in the publishing process so um where do i start about uh months ago i started getting some more help at hohenko we hired someone who could do some of the photography for the product especially for the website catalogues and so that cleared up a lot of my free time and the second time this photographer came i told charlie well i would normally be taking photos of our bags right now so maybe it's a good time to invest that time and put the same effort in photographing some of my knitwear designs so i put on some makeup i i remember looking at the mirror and saying it's going to be fine it's going to be fine you just go there and photograph those patterns the weather was great for me when i do photography it all has to do with the light i live in a rather dark house even here in my studio i am i have to move my couch to face the window so that i get more light and you can see me and so the weather was good i thought it's perfect weather and i asked charlie to help me do the photography for all of the patterns that i had here and when i just gathered the pile i thought these patterns need to be together they are they are meant to be together they are one of each and so that's what i did we i bundled them up and i launched them as my ready for fall collection because i truly think that this little bundle has anything that you might want to need a shawl a cowl socks a beanie and a pullover so if you want to put together a little war row capsule for the fall then this ebook is a great way to to start you know there are patterns for all of these pieces there are so many but sometimes when we look at things together like that it inspires us to maybe plan our projects a little bit better so that maybe they match or they have some colors in common because you might be wearing them together so that is my that is what i um planned with this with this little ebook so i thought i would come here and share again all of these some of them you haven't seen for many months but they are finally out again the collection is called ready for fall and here are the five patterns first i'm gonna talk about the socks these are [Music] the caramel sauce socks of course they look a lot better in the pattern photograph this is my computer camera and it's not as flattering as a nice fancy camera but [Music] they are made using la vie enemy yarn from paris this is sport weight yarn and the colorway is called caramel and what i i'm not going to go too in depth so that i don't bore you but what i like about these socks is the stitch pattern that i used so i i use a lot of lace in my socks and i love them they don't i mean you don't have to always make them elastic i've made socks that have lace pattern on the cuff or even through throughout the entire leg or on or at a portion of the leg but i find that lace tends to be more inelastic sort of like stockinette stitch and i like better me for myself the way a ribbed sock fits so for this i experimented with knits and pearl it's not a rocket science but i like that it looks lazy it doesn't look very different to all of the lace patterns that we normally use but it is ripped and it it is a lot more elastic than than regular lace so it adjusts better to your legs and feet and the socks it helps the socks stay up a little bit and not or not flare out sometimes they flare out a little around my ankles um they have they are needed from the cuff down they have a heel flap a ribbed one to continue the the ribbing that we were working on for for the leg i made a ribbed heel flap and then a flat a flat normal toe these are the caramel sauce socks then i designed this is one of my favorite things i designed the show simple but beautiful i call this show there it is some me time i am wearing airport clothes as you can see everything's very comfortable i am ready to go um let me style it a little bit better this show i started this in january i was staying at the summer house and i was having a very self-involved time i was trying to get my hand deep and rescue me from the waters of 2020 i was trying to do things that did me good that made me feel good and the thing that makes me feel good is actually knitting i really like knitting and sometimes i don't need on the projects i have because i have to write them so i have reached a stage where i need to stop and write what i'm doing or because i don't remember what i was or what i was doing so i have to go check the row number i was on or whether i needed to do shaping um sometimes i stopped knitting because i just don't like the yarn or what i'm making or the color combination or the way things are turning out and i get really frustrated and i just quit the project or just toss it until i detox in my mind from from those projects and i had just received a box from magpie fiverrs at the time back in january they were very generous and they sent me this big box with a lot of yarns to try and i never expected it to come because normally mail won't come they sent it by mistake actually they didn't know that i couldn't receive yarn so they just sent it and [Music] for some reason it skipped customs what normally would happen is that a box gets stuck in customs and there's no way for me to get things out or it's very difficult or expensive super expensive sometimes um in this case for some reason the box really went through customs just like that and one day the door the postman shows up in my door and says here's the box for you that made me happy and i knew that especially at the time when i couldn't get any yarn because i wasn't traveling um so so i knew that that yarn whatever it was the yarn was the yarn meant happiness to me so i really wanted to make something out of some of that yarn and i didn't have enough for sweaters because there were two skeins of each so i just cast on i just cast on a triangular shawl i the the yarn is very timeless it's very classic it's kind of old school yarn the kind of yarn that my grandma used to use for her projects so i thought of designing a show that is old school but [Music] you know that it doesn't have a modern twist it's just the way we wear these shawls that make them modern right so i just cast on a triangle in garter stitch and then after a while i decided to add some lace pattern but it's so simple and so repetitive that the way i design this i i can go on and i and i always know where i am so there are enough repeats so that once you finish one you have the correct stitch count to start another repeat of the lace pattern so i really like that uh about this design i really like that my friend ali she wanted to test but she wanted to use her yarns because she has her own yarn company and she didn't have the same weight so i said you know what it doesn't matter you can test with what whatever weight so instead she used decay she made fewer repeats of the lace and she used one more skein and i was able to photograph that sample for the for the e-book and i was able to include her yarn in the pattern description i don't have her sample here because she came to visit yesterday and she took it back but you can look at it on ravelry the most green version of the pattern is a different way a different amount of repeats a different needle i mean you could use fingering weight two skeins would give you a beautiful huge shawl maybe if i'm using fingering weight i would add another pattern repeat to the end you can do you can do the the lacy beads in one color and all the garter in a different color so you can make a two-tone version of this same design i just thought this is something that i would need when i want to take a break from everything that stresses me out from knitting as a job and i want to need for myself so i called it some me time when i take some me time i work on things that make me really happy and help me relax and help me get grounded and find some peace i think a lot about self-care especially this year i've been thinking a lot about that i've been thinking about gifting myself with time to do all the things that for years i thought i wasn't worthy of so take time to move take take time to walk take time to to need take time to make my food take time to visit friends take time to go out and have a beautiful cup of coffee and a chat with my dearest friends take time to sit down with my kids and listen to all their super long stories without needing to always make more um this is something that a lot of us struggle especially women um we we get wrapped up in this wave of empower women and we can take over the world and we can do and we are powerful and look at us go and girl boss vibe and that wasn't really working for me because if i tell myself that i can do more and that i should do more then i'll try to do more and i'll probably end up succeeding at doing more um because i have a lot of energy but that doesn't mean that making or doing more is actually what i need so a lot of these patterns have to do or or where born during this time of accepting this new or i don't know how to call it this this point of view for this year for me that um really influenced my work and the way that i share the way that i behave on social media and the way that i've been living for for the past nine months or so for of this year anyway some me time it's a show that hopefully you will pick up and you'll know where you are and it's soothing and relaxing and when you finish it it's beautiful to wear it warms you and it complements your autumn wardrobe i use as i said magpie fibers this yarn is called nest sport it's a corey dell yarn and the color is a deep rich shade of brown very warm almost caramel but if you compare it with the caramel socks these are lighter and it's called twilight beaver third pattern is a sweet cowl i'm taking this one on my trip this cowl i just wanted to use the yarn i just really wanted to use this yarn i got this as a gift from a shop owner jan she is the owner of the forever yarn shop in doylestown philadelphia or philadelphia area and she was vending at vogue and i came say hi and a couple of my dire friends were hanging out with jan because she's so kind and she said please take some of this mohair that i have um custom dyed i think for for my shop so the yarn is called kidzeta it's a mohair silk by gabbard yarn those you can see the four colors that i use kind of a lilac gray pink bone or of white and then um variegated or tonal like an oatmeal with some pink and they are only in the same color family and all the colors that jan had picked had this this vibe and she she helped me put the colors together i think i think she actually picked all the colors and she asked the dyer of this the the owner of the the yarn company gephardt yarn she asked her to hand dyed some more hair for for her shop so you wouldn't normally find this hyundai version of the kidzeta but i was fortunate to receive four skeins of it i used about half a skein of each color i quote the yardage that i used in the pattern and i used every color i used it double stranded so it gave me this thick or fluffy very very fluffy fabric and if you want to substitute the gauge that i achieved is more or less that of a decay weight so let's say you want to make it with just one strand of surya alpaca or other yarns that are more of a decay weight then you can replace both strands of mocha with just one strand and i also give the required yardages for that in the pattern this cowl is an infinity code so you start with a provisional gaston and then you join both ends together it's it's worth lengthwise so back and forth and it has a reversible cable on one end so as you can see when you fold the cowl um if the the border is peeking you you get a cable on both sides i love reversible cables i love cables in general and then i used a lacy pattern with a cute bubble like a leaf with a little bubble in the center and this one is not reversible but i think that the the wrong side looks really cute too so i call it reversible let's say it's reversible and i love the way it looks both uh with like with just just wearing it with uh without rubbing it twice with just one wrap around your neck and then twice it gets really cozy and very elegant i love the colors and i plan to bring this on my trip so that i'm very warm if it gets chilly in the trails oh i realized i didn't tell you where we're going uh we're going to the pacific northwest in the us we will fly in and out of seattle but then we'll do a two-week road trip visiting national parks our goal is to hike as much as we can i think i have planned hikes for every single day i have some more here and there are no yarn shops in the plans because i i find it hard to fit a visit to the yarns to the yarn store during the times that they are open with the times that we really want to hike so i don't plan visits to yarn stores but if if i can if somehow we can make it happen i'll definitely visit some of the answers in the area i know that there are a ton a ton there are stores opening there all the time i have a few actually friends who who own yarn stores there so we'll see but i don't promise a report of the yarn stores of the pacific northwest i can't promise a report of the trails we are bringing our raincoats we have lots i posted about our trip on instagram yesterday and we have received so much advice and so many recommendations that i think that we're on i made good plans i had already made an in-depth itinerary but based on the things that people were recommending i think that i have beat well so i'm happy about that the other item that i'm bringing with me to the pacific northwest is a beanie even though it's uh only the beginning of fall it might get it might get chilly there this is the change your mind beanie also part of the collection and i call the change your mind i'm gonna show you that it has a double brim uh double fold brim so it's a triple brim because this is designed for fingering weight yarn and i get cold when i wear a beanie i wanna i wanna have my ears and my forehead warm so that way with three layers you're really warm and then the top is a it's a it's not as thick it's lazy and just one layer so when i cast this on again i was trying to create patterns that were happy and easy not patterns probably projects i was casting on projects for myself so what do i want to need what do i what do i need to need what do i feel like knitting and um this was in february march the kids were just starting their school and i was doing a lot of the school driving and sometimes i they got either in or they came out at different times so we spent some time on the car waiting for them to come out or i arrived early to pick them up i am not my kids are not taking the bus to and from school to reduce the chances of catching kovid since they have been going to school since the beginning of the year since february so i'm charlie and i are doing the effort of driving them to and back from school and so i was spending a lot of time on the car and i thought okay i need a i need a hat that i can just knit a ribbed one you know one by one i'm going to wear that thing a lot i wear my ribbed hats a lot and also if i want to knit and walk because i'm walking more then now i have this project that i can work on and knit and walk anyway i started with the orange color this is uchi ushititas yarn singles and the color is called madras and then let's say by the time i got here i was already super bored with it super bored then i kept going and i think that when i reached this point i said i can't do this anymore this is this is too boring i need very slowly especially ribbing and i think i have been meeting for like two weeks and i was here oh no this is not working out um we're breaking up this project tonight the way it is no so i decided to add another lacy ribbing to the top of the hat and i changed color i picked the a skein of yarn also by ushita the color is owl and it has some speckles that match the orange perfectly so i decided to make it a two-tone hat and for the pom-pom i use both colors of yarn so this if you have leftovers from one skein um i think that you need a little bit more than half a skein of each color but you don't need full skein so sometimes you know how sometimes we use a little bit of color for some stripes and yeah charlie's here [Music] okay the last pattern in the booklet is the newspaper pullover and this one i think it's everyone's favorite and mine too this is one of the my favorite sweaters that i ever made i'm so proud of it it's a brioche pullover i used a contrasting combination of yarn so very dark gray and white and not only i ventured into brioche which is not scared scary at all just if if you know me this is my second time knitting brioche and designing brioche so you know i don't know why i was so scared of it um i wouldn't i wouldn't recommend taking courses or doing tutorials or you know just pick a pattern and follow the instructions and that's what i did i picked up a pattern i followed the instructions and i learned with the pattern and then i realized yeah i can use this shaping i can use these stitches to design my own patterns and anyway this is a raglan pullover and as you can see the main color is the most prominent vertical line so i'm using white as the main color on the body and black as the main color for the sleeves on this section and then i alternate it's white for the main color here and black for the main color here and that goes on all through the sweater so it's vertical and horizontal stripes combined i'm in love with this thing i had a blast designing it this was not an easy design for me to write but it was absolutely enjoyable i love the finished sweater so much that i'm taking it with me i don't normally bring my sweaters with me on trips because honey twitter's weigh a lot and i am very careful with um the weight of my luggage but this one is very light this one is only um about 300 grams so i'm bringing it because i think i'll wear it a lot also um the yarns that i used are by two big friends the dark one is by norne tuba in the in in norway and the white one is by my friends at manos del uruguay and this is fino by mano said uruguay in color ivory letter opener and this is singles by norne and the color is flight full or something that i'm forgetting and mispronouncing for sure this sweater is my dream pullover i i called it newspaper sweater because it reminds me of the pages of a newspaper and i love them i love black and white i love graphic things i like graphic art i've always been really drawn to monochrome designs that have a lot to say and they are not just about color and i think that this one truly represents that it looks like a simple sweater when i show it when i hold it up it's like yeah it's a simple sweater but you and i know it's not and when i photographed it i was able to capture really the way i feel about the sweater the way i love to wear it how beautiful it fits because it's not oversized but it's not tight fitting either the yarns that i picked both have silk which make give the sweater this drapey and sophisticated look for those of you who really want a more crisp definition of your brioche and your colors maybe i suggest substituting the fingering weight with applied yarn instead of a single ply silk yarn so that will give you much more elastic fabric and the stripes will be more noticeable too but i'm more than excited with my yarn choices if they feel very luxurious and soft and beautiful and they were created by beautiful people these yarns the cuffs are finished with just one color color one or two i don't know and the dark one and i finished them with a tubular bind off same for the neckband this the neckband is picked up after sometimes when we do brioche when i do brioche at least i get these uneven and even cast on or bind off or when i'm making new stitches here but then because i picked up the stitches for the neckband after i was able to hide all of that under the neckband so let's for for the back it's really even and neat and tidy but for the front you can see that there were some stitches added when i was shaping the neckline and this didn't look as neat as for the back so because i was picking the stitches afterwards for the neckband i could you know finish that very very neatly and i realized because someone asked that i never show the bottom of the sweater on the photos because i tucked into my trousers so the bottom of the sweater is just a black or a dark band of ribbing with a tubular bind off too so the newspaper pullover all of these are available as individual patterns on ravelry and on my website hockeynits.com they are also available as a bundle as an ebook and all of my patterns are 20 off because we are getting ready for the hockey phone needs a loan for 2021 this is an event that we host every year and this year is our 10th knit along 10 years doing little lungs on rivalry together and so we are super excited getting ready the sign ups are open until september 18 and until then you can get any of my self-published patterns including ebooks 20 off if you use the code hockey fall cal 2021 all lower cups but i think that they are not case sensitive um so remember that i'm going to put it in the in the show notes and what else i hope you like them i'm really excited about this collection i want to say something deeper because it means really a lot to me these things that this this collection that i just put out but i have written so much about all of that already that if you have read everything that i wrote you're probably bored of listening to me talk about this collection so i hope that you'll give my patterns a try if you never tried one i write with a lot of love a lot of feeling it is i always say it is my dream job i have my dream job and i have other jobs and i do other kinds of work and this is what i love to do and i refuse to let go of this job and i really want every pattern that i write to make whoever's making it feel confident and happy so before i sign off i need to tell you about the things that i'm working on i some of my works in progress are not here but i finished a show design and it's also inspired by graphic lines and geometric art i i draw i drew something and i wanted to see if i could achieve that shape it didn't come out as i drew it but it came out stunning and i'm very happy and we're testing it so i'm going to give you a very brief sneak peek of something that i call the frank shaw i it's huge it is a strap and i used four colors of malintosh because i use one color from another dyer but that company closed and so i'm i'm going to stop tagging them because people are going to try to get that yarn and it's not available and madeline tosh has a very very similar color to the one that i use almost identical so i used off-white is the antler the gold is glazed pecan the medium gray is great gray owl and then the dark gray is scratch record all of these are tosh merino light and i'm so excited that i finished another show i am working on the color work coat with the color combinations from tennis fiber arts lola being yarn company and the uncommon thread i am i am working on the front bands as you can see and i cannot show it to you i am not going to bring this project with me on my trip so it won't be ready for a while but it's there i decided to do short sleeves because i just liked the way that it looked when i tried it on and i am going to show you the things that i am bringing with me on my trip first of all if you have never heard of our bags we have a project bag company a leather project bag company called hojianko every bag is handmade here in buenos aires by super gorgeous and talented makers artisans from our area and we have the honor of selling their products to all of you so i'm taking i own a few of our products i try not to not to keep too many of them like the coat right now is inside our forage bag camo forage bag um i like the forage bag a lot i love the size this is like a six scale sweat what sweater now um but i am not taking that one with me because as i said i'm going to be hiking a lot and i don't want to carry bigger bags that might not get you so i have a technical backpack that i have to bring with clasps and like a backpacking backpack then um and then the other bag that i'm bringing is this one from this one is from hokkien ko this is our pin up tote and it has little perforations oh i'm surprised i didn't put any pins on mine but it has little perforations so you can add your favorite enamel pins this is made with a genuine suede so this is leather and the handles are made using the kettle this is natural leather mine has been used for a couple of months already so my handles have now turned brown bucket that turns brown when you first get your bags it's natural and then it starts tanning so this is covering the things that i may need at the airport or if i meet a friend at for breakfast and i want to carry my knitting and my water bottle and a few other things i might not want to bring my technical backpack so i'm bringing this one instead and i think it it works out great then inside i am bringing a fabric bag this is a design that we had last year for hockey phone leads along we didn't make any project packs for the knits along this year unfortunately um so this is carrying my current project and it's a new sweater design that i'm working on now and i must tell you that i kept going with continental and i think that i made great progress so right now i can honestly say that i think i am faster than with english and i am enjoying it i feel comfortable the only thing that i can't do is need without looking really i can't see i'm looking at you and i'm knitting but [Music] i don't feel as confident yet and when i have tried to do it for a longer time like not looking i ended up ripping because i had dropped stitches or maybe i needed into the stitch below so it's not a good idea yet but i think i'm faster i wanted to i wanted to get faster at knitting so that i could see my ideas come to life a little bit quicker and then i can enjoy what i'm making more without feeling frustrated because after all knitting is my dream job but it's a job so i this is important for me this is something that i wanted to do and i learned by watching my friend dina from the yarn shop diddy do in finland she sent me a whatsapp video so it's not on youtube it's in my whatsapp and she sent me a whatsapp video of um of how she needs and i just looked at how she needed and decided okay i love the way she needs i know i've always admired the things that she makes so it might be a good idea to just pick someone that needs in a fabulous way and try to mimic what they're doing right so that is what i did and so far it's working out i cast on last night and this is huge progress for me especially during a day when i've been packing so i am terribly excited i feel like i now really want to go to my knitting my knitting is enjoyable again and i feel really really renewed so maybe that's just what i needed try something a few new things uh try brioche i have tried a few quite a few new things lately so the yarn that i'm using i love it i got this a few years ago in canada and it's cash merino 20 by sweet fiber and the colorway is charcoal because it's my favorite color to wear and i want to knit things that make me really happy so i got several skeins of these i mentioned that i wanted to create a couple of sweaters that i can wear with baggy jeans tucked inside my jeans or baggy jeans or trousers so my idea for this one is a circular yolk sweater with a few eyelets and not too boxy and not too shapely so kind of fitting like the newspaper pullover because i really would like to wear them that way tucked into inside my trousers then so that is coming in my in my project bag i get asked a lot whether i can meet on the plane and yes you can meet on the plane there only once many years ago someone on a chilean flight asked me to put my knitting away but then i needs on every other flight what i do is i screw out the tops of my the tips of my needles i screw them out and i put them on inside my coin purse or my pencil case and then i put them back on on the plane because sometimes i feel like um there's this prejudice towards knitting needles so you can't come on the plane with a pencil but you can't come on the plane with a knitting needle so what i do is i try for them not to really see that they're attached to fabric and then i put them back on when i'm on the plane just for security i've never been told otherwise then i'm bringing my notions pouch a very flashy metallic uh notions pouch with my essential notions but no scissors because this one's coming on the plane i am bringing our my journal this is my notebook my no our notebook covers from hokiango2 i am not trying to advertise our company i just really like the things that we make i feel like i make the things that i wanted to have for myself so the journal covers are leather they are designed for an a5 journal i use a bullet journal by the way we have some of these in the shop and then it has a removable pencil case you you could even put your needles there and so when you want to write on this side of the page the pencil case is not bothering all the pencils are not bothering you so you can take take it off and then put it back on so i'm carrying this it has all my knitting notes and i it has pockets so i can put photographs of things of ideas or charts that i draw or sketches that i drew in other another paper but i want to if i want to keep it all together i use this thing a lot in my favorite color color not like my only favorite color that is not black [Music] and then i'm also carrying with me two skeins of mayak mayak is a u.s italian company that makes yak fibers and other beautiful yarns and they are good friends they've always been so kind to me especially paola she's a really good friend and recently they've been their instagram account was hacked someone i think that someone found their password and changed it and then they got us for a ransom for run some money to recover their their accounts um it sounds lighter than it actually is it's their entire business their entire their entire customer base is on that instagram account so it's tragic i don't know what i would do if i didn't have my social media account and they've been trying to get people to follow them on a new account called mayak lower underscore fibers mayak underscore fibers so i thought in order to give them a little bit exposure these days i can make some socks using their yak they are not hard wearing they would not be hard wearing socks but they would be luxurious and cozy and actually the yak fiber holds up really well so i'm interesting to see how nice these are this is worsted weight yarn so they should knead up really quickly and i know that i'm going to see a lot of this green in the pacific northwest so i thought it was perfect to talk about them for a few posts and maybe tag them so that people can actually see their their yarns and follow follow mayak again because i i think that they are a really wonderful company doing a lot of really good things in the world so this is my other future project i haven't even wound up the yarn to make these socks uh worsted weight socks but i am bringing that here i might wind the yarn on the plane so my project my notions pouch my three my three um needs that i'm carrying with me and i am ready to go and now as you saw my husband came looking for me i'm probably i probably have to print some paperwork and we need to start getting ready to go to the airport so i'm gonna say bye bye here thanks so much for watching i hope you go get some parents and bags and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Joji Locatelli

Views: 18,718

Rating: 4.9364486 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie

Id: I7y8X5WiM64

Length: 53min 42sec (3222 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021