A chat with Joji Locatelli

Monday brought the release of this month’s Boost Your Knitting pattern, the stellar Sterlyn Shawl, designed by the incomparable Joji Locatelli. This gorgeous shawl, knit in, well, scrumptious Scrumptious 4-ply, is the perfect canvas on which to practice April’s featured technique, fixing mistakes in your lace. I caught up with Joji the other day and really enjoyed hearing more about her thoughtful approach to the Boost Your Knitting brief. Read on for Joji’s tips on avoiding mistakes in lace, what she does when she makes them, and the technique she’d most like to conquer this year!

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All Sewn Up!

When Nancy Marchant’s Bramen Cowl was released this month, I was excited to see it made use of a sewn cast off, a personal favourite of mine. Sewn cast offs have a lot to recommend them. They tend to be stretchy, so you won’t end up with a cowl that won’t fit over your head. They’re a fabulous match for a long tail cast on. And I find the sewn action of the cast off pleasing and meditative to work.

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Ravelry how-to: Adding project photos

We’ve been having a fab time over in this month’s Boost Your Knitting knitalong, which celebrates the tuck stitch! We realize though that, if you’ve never uploaded photos to Ravelry, you might be a little unsure how to add them to your project page and share your progress in the group. Since we’re all about learning new things, we’ve planned a few posts for the next few weeks taking you step-by-step through some of the finer points of Ravelry. Today, we’ll look at how to add photos to your Ravelry project page.

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There's more than one way to two-colour long-tail cast on!

A few weeks ago, we shared a video tutorial detailing the two-colour long-tail cast-on method, which is used in this month’s Boost Your Knitting pattern, the Bramen Cowl. As with many knitting techniques though, there’s more than one way to accomplish this cast on. Today let’s take a look at another approach, which uses both hands and is sometimes known as a “thumb method” long-tail cast on.

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The Magic of a Two-Colour Long-Tail Cast On

I love the joyful feeling that comes from learning something new. There’s a real satisfaction in delving into a completely new technique, and emerging some hours later feeling like you’ve got it. But there’s a special rush that comes from learning a new tip or trick that builds on previous knowledge, that you can almost immediately grasp, and that leaves you wondering hey, why didn’t I think of that? I had just that sort of light bulb moment when learning how to work the two-colour long-tail cast on for the Bramen Cowl, this month’s Boost Your Knitting pattern.

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