Joji Locatelli gave a class called "Approach to Sweater Design" at Titityy LYS in Jyväskylä. This was an inspirational evening filled with tips and tools for knitting and sweater design. If you ever get the opportunity to take a class with her, I'd definitely recommend it!

 The class covered sweater design from finding inspiration to grading and pattern layout. Joji showed us pictures of knitwear that have been inspirational to her and explained how some more complicated constructions had been achieved. Then she introduced the traditional construction techniques and gave some examples of how they can be modified. She explained how to take measures and transform those to stitch counts. Last, she explained how to use tables of measurements for grading the pattern.


The class was full of knitters from all around Finland and even from St. Petersburg in Russia. There were differing backgrounds in knitting and knitwear design. It turned out that some of the participants would have preferred the previous class "Sweaters that fit (You!)", but couldn't make it and took this class instead. I'm sure they found the part of taking measures useful. And for those of us with some design experience already, I'm sure the others also agree that it doesn't hurt to learn more from the best! I found the little details most interesting: what knitters want to knit, what kinds of questions will they have, what kinds of details should you add in the instructions to make it easier for the knitters.


Joji's Worsted boxy was used as an example in the class. To make the most of the learnings in class, I think I'll continue with homework and knit this one next. Although, now looking at her patterns more carefully, I do feel tempted to get the whole Interpretations 3 collection! Especially My Everything has an interesting construction, and would be more fitting to my plan of knitting a black cardigan. If I knit Worsted boxy with my black silk-cashmere-merino cardigan yarns, will I then have to buy more for the cardigan..?