the woolrevolution podcast ep 1 - the power of a good granny square

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this very first episode of the wool revolution podcast i guess that's what i'm going to call it my name is helena and i'm a swedish knitter living in stockholm sweden and i go by the name wool revolution ravelry and instagram and yeah like i said this is my first episode of what i'm hoping is going to be a long tale of podcast episodes i am i have no plan for this i just sat down here on the floor uh in my apartment and just pushed record so i'm taking it as it comes i have a few things i want to show you and yeah that's it basically a little bit about me i have been thinking about uh doing this kind of knitting podcast for a while now a few years actually but i just haven't gotten around to it and um so yeah we'll see if i even upload this episode i'm gonna have to watch it and judge if it's uh good enough i guess but i think it's a very fun fun way to um to show what i'm doing what i'm reading on and talk and reflect a little bit about everything knitting related because there's not really um space for that on instagram for example i feel like that's a lot more fast paced so what i really appreciate about these um knitting podcasts and there are a lot of them now which is amazing it's that it's a slower format and it's easier to just talk and have a chat about knitting so that's what i'm hoping this is going to be um trying to think if i'm gonna talk a little bit about myself i don't know that's not really relevant to uh the content in this podcast but i'm 28 years old i live just outside of stockholm in an apartment with my um boyfriend and i've been knitting on and off i'd say for maybe eight years or so maybe a little bit more 10 years maybe but yeah on and off so i've had long periods of time when i haven't been knitting at all so for example i've been living abroad and studying abroad and during those times i have just not been knitting i just yeah and i'm also very like like in the summertime i don't really knit and which i think is standard for a lot of people who have like really warm summers and cold winters like we do here in sweden um it's easier to be knitting in the winter and now it's august when i'm recording and i am feeling the the fall inspiration really um kicking in as it always does uh around this time but i haven't been knitting much this summer to be honest i have one sweater that i've been knitting on and i'm going to show you that but now i realize i didn't bring it here one sec so the standard format of the knitting podcast that i've been watching is usually first showing off the finished objects so everything that i have um that i'm done with and then showing up showing off the works in progress so everything that i'm working on right now and then usually acquisitions so everything knitting related that has been bought recently and um i guess i'm gonna follow that format um just just to have something to hold on to but we'll see if i if i break loose from that's eventually in the future if there is a future for this podcast i don't know and i might as well say also that i um i thought about whether to record in swedish or in english and obviously i decided to go with english but that might change in the future depends on how comfortable i feel like i am uh with english obviously it's not my first language so i guess it's easier to express myself in swedish so we'll see if i feel restricted or not um i don't know right now i have zero subscribers because i don't i haven't even created my youtube account yet so obviously i don't even know who i'm talking to so i guess it doesn't really matter at this point but we'll see what happens so i'll start with what i'm wearing and this is actually only summer knit i think so like i said i'm not a summer knitter um i usually don't need at all during the summer and i haven't i've never really um liked uh you know knitting in cotton for example which is i guess like a summer material um i i knitting wool that's what i do so but yeah this is this one i knit a few years ago and it's um i didn't follow a pattern really so let's see if i remember what i did now it's been like i said a few years ago so first of all the yarn it's a soundness gone the norwegian brand sunless [Music] and the yarn is lina i think yeah it's lina i think it's on this gun linda um i don't remember the colors but if i maybe i put it on my revelry i'm not sure you can always go there and check out um i usually upload almost everything that i need on my revelry page and i try to write thoroughly what i'm doing so um you can check out there if you have any questions um so like i said i didn't follow a pattern uh but i followed um one instruction of the contiguous method is that what it's called contiguous contiguous method it's a way of knitting the shoulder so let's see if i can here you can see i guess you start by you start by oh it's basically like down here you basically do like raglan increases as such it's almost like a diamond shape here um but in the beginning you increase quite rapidly to get this sort of straight line and then out like this i'm not sure if i'm explaining it very well but there's an explanation on how to do this on ravelry so i think you can find it if you just search for the contiguous method um which is really nice i think it's free as well so just go on there and read and i think i just winged it with this one um i probably like cast on a few times just to see and like knit knit a little bit just to see that it um felt like a good size and then i um just went for it and luckily it worked out really well and i don't know if it's because this is the only time i've used this method so i don't know if you can see it's almost a little bit of a puff shoulder which i adore it's really cute i'm not sure if why that happened maybe because of how i increased i don't i don't know um i guess i have to try to use this method again and see if the same thing happens um i suppose it has to do with how i increase like how often and in what interval i suppose um i didn't do any like short rows or neck shaping so usually you do something to get the back um to be a bit higher up than the front just because that's how the body looks i'm not sure if i even knew about that when i knitted this to be honest um or i just you know didn't have the um i just couldn't figure out how to how to um how to shape it i guess i can't remember but the point is it's the same front and back but i don't mind to be honest because i mean the neck is a bit wide like this it's almost like a boat neck i think it's called when it's sort of wide a wide neck like this and i don't know i think it's cute i i can't be too i can't be bothered with it um usually it can be annoying when when it just creeps up like this the sweater but i think it's fine and actually kind of pretty to have it a bit high in the front and as you can see it's a t-shirt and that's also something i remember because um like i said summer and it hasn't really been for me and i don't really need like tank tops because i don't really use tank tops even in the summer um i'm much more likely to wear a t-shirt so and i feel like there aren't that many like summer t-shirts uh at least well now there is but then like they didn't really feel like that and especially compared to like tank tops which there are a lot of so i think like when i separated for the sleeves here i didn't yeah you can almost see it i didn't really uh continue knitting i just like knit up this um cuff here or whatever you call it straight away so it's fairly easy and let me see i'm like i said i'm sitting on the floor so i don't know if it's fairly short this is how it looks um down here like almost a crop t-shirt very very basic but i'm super happy with it okay let's get into some knitting i um yesterday evening i finished a sweater that has been long overdue uh i bought this pattern several years ago but it took a while for me to cast on just because i couldn't choose colors and then when i finally decided i had to like re-knit it maybe three times not the whole thing but i came pretty far and then i had to green it um because obviously i didn't swatch and um sometimes like with this one i could wing it this t-shirt but most of the time i'm not as lucky so i have to rent it a few times um i don't know how it is with you but i tend to wing it a lot so [Music] yeah this is the sweater let me maybe i should have started uh with showing you the sweater and then talk about it so here we go so the pattern is uh vinterfield it's a pattern by skender knits one of her early patterns so it's it's an old one and the reason i had to re-knit it so many times is because of sizing i think all like every time it was because of the size i yeah i had a hard time choosing size because i didn't swatch and i um i didn't i i didn't measure myself or anything i just like because her sizing i think is like size one two three four five six seven and continues up so i just like picked a number and went for it um and the final like the size on this one i think still unfortunately is a little bit too big um i mean i like it big and loose fitting but i think this was a bit too too much but i don't know i haven't really tried it on properly like with an outfit maybe it looks good with hair jeans or something i don't know and um yeah and one thing i struggled with um which is the thing i was working on last last night because i was actually finished with this like maybe a few months ago but the neckline i had big problems with the neckline because this is a top-down construction so you start with the neckline um and it's a two by two ribbing and i decided immediately that i wanted to do a folded neckline so so my plan was to like knit this piece a bit longer maybe like this like this long maybe and then fold it over like so which is something i um do on a lot of sweaters i have done on not a lot of sweaters but a few sweaters i've done that and i think that looks really nice so i just like i needed um the neckline just a bit longer like twice as long as i wanted it to be and then i just continued on knit the whole sweater and then in the end i folded it down and it just got so weird i don't know what happened but it's it almost like flared out uh [Music] and i i don't know what that's like the reason for that i guess maybe just because the nickname was too too wide maybe like to not wide but like i feel like i say but like but like all the time i'm so sorry about that um i don't know i mean why like this maybe that's the reason i know it flared out really weird and i thought maybe i could put an elastic band uh inside of it just to get it a bit more snug but then i then i am thought instead i could just cut it and pick up the stitches like here just underneath and then re-knit it but upside down this time and i thought that would be okay i mean if it would have been regular stitches i guess you could see that it's knit upside down so like if it was just stockinette then it would be pretty obvious if i started knitting upside down but since it was a two by two ribbing i just figured it won't it won't show and i yeah it doesn't really show to be honest so it worked out well but i did some i don't know because i did sure you do short row shapings so when i cut it i didn't really know where i was in the short row shaping so it it's probably the case that i'm it's probably a bit tilted almost because i don't know where i started or finished the short row shaping so i just like picked the corner and just knitted the ribbing ah it's really hard to explain i realized i hope i hope you understand what i'm saying anyway it worked out well i think um [Music] yeah i'm filming i'm recording on my phone so i don't really have that like advanced zoom zooming feature so i hope you can see some details at least and the color combination i'm super happy about it my first idea was to use some greens like different shades of green um or even to have a bright background color so maybe instead of this um blackish dark gray black i thought about having i have this like almond the color is called almond but it's not really almond it's like a beige almost like creamy white page and have that as a background color um yeah i had a different a few different options but i'm really glad i went with this so yeah the yarn i used is um [Music] holst super soft which i think is one of the recommended yarns for this pattern i know that a leaf from the skein dear needs has used holes a lot and it's a really nice yarn this is i think this is the first time i knit a whole sweater with it and it's really light weight and soft and 100 wool so there's that that's all about this sweater finally like four or five you know maybe maybe like four years in the making great helena yeah so next up uh i feel like i need to sit on something very very ergonomical position down here next up let's talk about what i have been knitting on this summer and that is a sweater let's see how to show this here we go [Music] aha oh can you see the colors it's like a bright pink and a bright orange um i call this like my lollipop sweater but it's just because i think it makes me think of a lollipop i guess very happy sweater and i started this um in the spring and i hoped it could be my like a spring sweater because it feels like a spring time sweater but it's august and it's not finished so i guess it will be my fall sweater not really fall colors though um it's knit in [Music] rama final i got this yarn as a birthday present and yeah i just felt like doing something crazy with it and maybe some of you recognize this pattern uh it's very similar uh to the uh what's she called um my favorite things knitwear and sweater number sweating number 12 um from my favorite things knitwear but i haven't followed the pattern uh i just got inspired by this like broken rib stitch i think it's called so you basically do like one row of knit stitches and then one row of knit one purl one and then you continue on with that and the reason why i didn't follow the pattern is because i looked when i looked at it at the sweater it didn't look like there were any short row shapings um so and also i just i enjoy uh like figuring things out for myself so i usually get inspiration from other sweaters could be like knitting designs or knit designs or like commercial you know sweaters in store and then i try to knit them up myself so that's what i did here i sort of uh did just a basic raglan and short throw did i do short row shaping oh maybe i didn't do short draw shipping i just like knitted back and forth in the beginning um like in almost like semi-circles just to make the back uh higher than the front and then i joined in the round somewhere after a few after a few rounds and because it's a striped sweater um there is the problem of where to change the color uh ideally i would have wanted to change maybe um yeah i don't know what would be ideal to change colors maybe like here underneath the armhole but i don't know up here i'm not sure because like you're gonna see it even if you try to do these like jog less stripes where you try to have a smooth transition between the colors [Music] even so you're gonna see the jog and i had a really hard time with the stripes and the the shaping of the neck and staying in the pattern i just couldn't wrap my head around because no matter what i did it just something went wrong like something had to give but in the end i i i sold it and the jog had to end up here in the back let's see [Music] can you see it here yeah you can see it but it's not it's not like it's not a dramatic um it doesn't show really that much so i'm pretty pleased with it and as you can see i have knitted the all of the body and i'm on to the sleeves and it's the fit is quite um it's not super narrow but still it's quite fitted which is how i wanted it like i didn't want this to be a bulky loose sweater so quite fitted and the same will go for the sleeves so i've decreased twice now and i'm gonna have to try it on and see how i want it like how it fits now and how it how often i have to decrease for the rest of the sleeve and then of course the neckline which might be a folded neckline i guess i mean i really like that so i'm pleased with this we'll see maybe it will be finished next spring and it will be my 2023 spring sweater i'm mostly excited about this because like i said i got the yarn as a christmas gift so it's nice to actually make something of it and to show it to the person who gave me the yarn which happens to be my boyfriend so i think he's he's excited to see this coming along yeah um so the next thing i'm going to show you is a baby knit that i'm working on because my let's see where is it because my um one of my um old friends is having a baby and this fall and i wanted to make something for the baby shower so i decided to start making a baby blanket which is from what i've heard something that is appreciated by parents to newborns just because it's very easy to take with you i guess you don't really dress newborns like there's no reason to dress them in a certain way because they just lie they just lay down all the time but i have i have a source and she told me that baby blankets are much appreciated so that's what i'm going for and i'm actually doing this in crochet which is not every day i i mostly knit but sometimes i dabble into the crochet universe and um this is what i'm making granny squares so i have made a few already so i'm guessing like i'll just join them um join them like so into a blanket i am loving how this is turning out loving loving loving um i couldn't decide if i wanted to do like maybe like a striped um simple strap crochet blanket or if i wanted to use these colors as like a big color block blanket so maybe one gray block here one page here and a beige here and the gray here so like a check pattern um but i'm sorry glad i'm so glad i went with the granny squares this is a classic like you should never doubt the power of a good granny square i would love to have my own blanket granny square blanket one day or any blanket really but that's that feels like a big project i'm not ready for that just yet but a baby blanket is is really quite possible to make and the yarn i'm using is um i guess you can call this leftover yarn although i have yeah i have one ball uh of each color 100 gram balls and i used this yarn for socks last christmas i'm sorry i'm looking i'm looking like this all the time because i have a really smart setup with my mirror so i can see [Music] if i'm in frame or what i'm filming so i'm sorry if i'm looking in that way all the time these are um yarbo ragi is the name of the yarn so it's a sock yarn um a thick sock yarn like aaron weight sock yarn so ranks okay gone you can save for really thick socks and last christmas i knitted socks for my partner's family uh all of them got socks in these colors but i had these balls left so i thought this would be a good yarn for a baby blanket because it's a mix between superwash wool and polyamide i guess so it's you can wash it and it's um it's wool but it's quite soft like it's not it's not like uh even i i think rama findul which i just showed my striped sweater uh was in the rama hindu even that wall is a bit um it's a bit more rough on the skin than this because this is treated and um i mean not that it's super important because it's a blanket so you're still gonna have it on top of whatever clothes you have on but i don't know i don't know i still i still feel like i need to knit in softer yarns for babies uh and a good thing is that you can wash this in the machine which i guess is good if it's for a baby so i'm really excited about this uh i haven't so yeah i've started knitting these maybe i'm no this is not the thing it's crochet uh i've done five of these i think now or six and i'm trying to weave in the ends as i go as you can see just because i don't want to end up with a thousand of these not a thousand but even 20 of these it'll be annoying to weave in the ends of all of them at the same time so i'm trying to do that as i go and then i guess i'm gonna have to connect them in some way i have no idea um how just yet i have done like granny square granny square um blanket before but it was a long time ago so i can't remember how but yeah i'm gonna use the beige beige color to connect them all so nothing no contrast color just the beige and the yarn i really like it because it's i mean ragi is a classic sock yarn from yarbo a swedish brand and but this one is really nice because it's like a tweety color almost you can see a little bit of specks here and there so it's very vibrant as opposed to if it was just a plain color so that's a nice element to it yes nothing more to say about that i'm using a 4.5 millimeter hook i i only have two crochet hooks one big and one small this is the big one sure this works it works out fine um i have two more things to show you i guess but these will be quicker um because i haven't i've barely started on them but one i just i want to talk about the ideas i have so one is i can show you what i've done so far it's not much it's just a little flat so this is uh let me see now this i think this is the wrong side this is the right side so it's just a rib like three knit two pearl rib i think um and the yarn is lit loppy um icelandic yarn and i have an idea um that i want to knit a sweater and this is you can see already it looks like a sweater no but i'm i want to knit a saddle shoulder construction so this is like this part of the shoulder and i've been googling a little bit and i've found a resource um that's described very basically like no just like the basic construction so i still have to figure out all the the measurements and stuff on my own but the construction so you basically knit one shoulder flap and then the other shoulder flap and then you pick up stitches um for the back yeah and for the front separately and then you like continue on the shoulder from this flap yeah i'm not sure exactly i'm yeah i'm taking it as it as it goes um but i want to have this ribbing on the sleeves and then the rest will be in plain stockinette and another thing i want to do is i want to have like an open like open them down here and then i will have a flap with three buttons like so so like a pk what's it called is it called pikia in swedish at least i don't know in english but like a golf golf sweater um so it's open here i hope you understand what i mean um maybe i can insert a picture of my inspiration uh yeah we shall see i i don't know i just like i mean i need this in a really short amount of time just to see what it looks like so i don't even know if this is what's going to be the final shoulder piece so yeah we'll see and the final project no i want to show you my project bag for this one sorry because i can see like a lot of knitters are buying really fancy project bags with cool fabrics and the patterns are really nice and i know there are a lot of makers out there who make their own project bags and sell them i'm way too uh cheap i guess is the word to buy those kind of things like i want to spend my money on yarn mostly and the knitting supplies if i need them i'm like i don't really buy things just because they look pretty so but i still need project bags because i don't want my projects just laying around the house the apartment um and the yarn yeah i want to collect all the yarn in something so i remember a long time ago i read about how to remake like a tote bag into a knitting project bag but i couldn't find exactly the instruction for it but i i just went for it on my own so so i'm gonna show you like i have a lot of these tote bags like a really simple tote bag usually with some kind of brand on it i mean i don't know why i have so many i i hope that there are more of you that just like end up with these i mean you get them sometimes and yeah i just have a lot of these and i don't need that many so i figured i could remake this into a project bag and i did and now this is my first prototype so it's not really it's not very pretty i just um i was pretty eager to just like try it and see if i could uh see what i could do so as you can see i have cut off the shoulder bands so i cut them off and then i just folded like this to create this um i needed something here so i can put the thread and i just like picked like a cotton yarn i had ideally maybe i would have something a bit thicker like a real um band i don't know uh but i choose this cotton yarn and then i can just ah look so it was really easy i didn't even use the sewing machine like i did this you can see i did this by hand just in and out in and out and this is where i insert the color yarn so highly recommend if you are if you can't be bothered with like fancy project bags and final project and this is not really it's not a project just yet and but i want it to be and i have wanted it to be for two years now so this is a yarn i have one it up wind it up into a ball uh it's an alpaca yarn which i bought in sweden i was in gravelhan it's up in the swedish field the swedish mountains and i was there skiing and then i went by this alpaca farm and bought this yard from the alpaca that was living there which was pretty cool i think that's the first time i buy something that's so local um and i did knit a swatch with the yarn it's super soft like it's really really nice um very very soft um it's i think it's even a baby baby alpaca yeah 100 baby alpaca um 100 grams and it's 253 meters for 100 grams so it's still like it's not super thin uh the the problem is i did i made this swatch maybe a year ago but i can't remember the needle size i used so it's fairly useless except like it's really soft so i can just like comfort myself with it no but i'm going to need something with it and i want to knit some kind of um like a polo neck thing um but because yeah i don't know if the yarn will be enough for what i ideally would like to do but i guess i could just start with a rib like start needing a ribbing so i have at least um around the neck something to have to wear around the neck gosh i'm getting tired now i think maybe it's time for me to start recording but i want you to help me with this if there are if there is anyone out there who's listening to this um i think i'll start by doing the ribbing and then depending on how much yarn i have left when i'm happy with the neck piece like this i'll decide on how to continue on maybe just like a little bit down here in the front a little bit down in the back so i can just like pull it on when i go skiing for for example so let me know if you have any ideas i don't i don't feel like buying a pattern because like i said i like ideally i would probably want it to be a bit longer than what i have yarn for so i don't feel like buying a pattern for for this i'm just gonna make it up as i go but if you have like inspirational pictures maybe some ideas on what i can do with not that much yarn let me know in the comment section below that's what all youtubers say let me know in the comment section below and please subscribe to my channel and give me a thumbs up yeah that's it for me i think i'm as you can notice i'm getting tired uh but i enjoy this i felt a little bit shaky and words are not always that easy to come by in english at least so we'll see what happens in the future hopefully i'll upload this to youtube hopefully i won't cringe when i look at it thank you for watching if you have been watching and maybe i'll see you next time goodbye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: the woolrevolution podcast

Views: 2,714

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Id: 6ecY7oGogJE

Length: 46min 52sec (2812 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 03 2022