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]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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