A V-Neck to Knit from Side to Side

One of the things that’s great about knitting is that you can make projects that fit exactly the way you want them. But if you’re newer to knitting you might not have the confidence to go your own way on a project, so it can help to work with projects that are meant to be made to measure to give yourself some practice.

The Confluence V-neck from Lauren McElroy is a great project to try out your skills at making a made to measure garment. It’s worked from side to side in seed stitch using two strands of fingering weight yarn held together.

You can decide how long you want it to be, how much ease you like and the depth of the V-neck/back as you sew the pieces together.

The seed stitch gives it a fun textured look that’s not at all difficult to achieve, and you can play with colors by using two coordinating shades or using two strands of the same yarn held together as you like.

You can find this pattern on Ravelry or on Lauren’s website.

This pattern is part of Lauren’s spring and summer collection, which also includes the made to measure Verse top, a super light fingering weight top that has a keyhole opening that can be worn at the front or the back of the garment as you like.

This one includes a picot edging and is worked from the bottom up in the round until the keyhole split. It also includes picots at the neckline, an I-cord tie and tiny buttons to close the neckline. It’s worked with a lovely silk and linen blend yarn that’s perfect for summer and great to wear with your favorite linen pants on the beach or anywhere else.

This pattern can also be found on Ravelry or you can purchase it directly from Lauren’s website.

[Photo: Lauren McElroy]

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Linen stitch is one of my favorite knitting stitch patterns that, every time I use it in a project, I think about how I don’t use it often enough.

It’s an easy stitch to make, with slip stitches done with the yarn held to the front of the work on the right/front side and to the back on the wrong/back side, which makes the strand of yarn a visible part of the pattern.

It also makes a fabric that is thick and looks kind of like a woven fabric.

I recently used linen stitch to make a double-thick pot holder, which I worked in a kind of interesting way. I didn’t want to have to do any sewing on the project, so I started it from a crochet cast on and picked up stitches from the side of the cast on to make the hot pad all in one piece in the round with the edge sealed.

This requires working on two circular needles, which is another technique I don’t use that often and am always reminded how much I like it when I do.

The combination of double thickness and the stitch pattern makes for a hot pad that’s already pretty thick, but I also added a bit of old towel to the inside before I closed up the end to make it super thick and extra protective for your surfaces.

I found the engineering challenge of this construction method to be a lot of fun, but you could also just knit it as a tube (casting on twice as many stitches as I did) and sew up the ends by hand when the knitting is done. Either way you’ve got a useful and pretty addition to your kitchen, whether you work it in a solid color, stripes or as a stash busting project will all your cotton odd balls.

You can grab the pattern over at Our Daily Craft, or check it out on Ravelry.

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