Knitting

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Add a Gorgeous Little Knit Cover to Your Summer Outfits

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Sometimes it’s hard to keep wearing your knits in spring and summer if you’re the type who has a warm nature. You can knit tees and tank tops, and even summer dresses, but it can also be nice to have a little knit cover to throw on in the evening when it’s a little cool or when you step into somewhere that’s cooler than outside.

The Stratum pullover/poncho by Yumiko Alexander is a great example of this type of garment. It’s just two big rectangles sewn together at the shoulders, with a little bit of sewing to make a “sleeve” on each side.

It’s worked with two fine weight yarns held together to make a DK weight (or you could start with a DK weight if you happen to have some handy). This makes it super light so it shouldn’t make you feel hot to wear it.

There are lace panels across the top of each piece, with a faux seam down the center to break up the eyelets. There’s also lace running down the sides, forming the edge of the sleeve and the sides of the garment. It’s rated for intermediate knitters because of the lace, but if you’ve worked lace before you should be fine with this project.

The piece is one size in width (43 inches), with three options for the length: 16, 20 and 24 inches, so you can decide if you want it cropped, long or somewhere in between. There are instructions for how to make the panels narrower or wider if you need to as well.

This would be a great little garment to wear over summer dresses or even to your fancy summer events when you want to wear something special that you made.

The pattern is available in English and Japanese, and you can get a copy on Ravelry.

[Photo: Yumiko Alexander.]

Comments

  1. Lovely – how can I get the pattern for this so I can make it – thank u

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

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.