French Girl Knits by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes

French Girl Knits, by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes (who just friended me on facebook! How cool is that!!), known in the knit and crochet community for her pattern company, French Girl, utilizes inventive combinations of texture, color, and stitch patterns in her fashion-forward, seamless design work featured in her new book, French Girl Knits.

French Girl Knits includes:

Classy, feminine designs fashioned in luxurious yarns that achieve suberb figure-flattering fit with seamless construction—the need for sewing has been eliminated with Kristeen’s one-piece designs.
Four thematic vignettes inspired by French daily life, film, and history: Enfant Sauvage (Wild Child), la Boutique Parisienne (A Vintage Dress Shop in Paris), Dans La Rue (Street Wear), and Creatrice (Creative Woman).
A design workshop featuring in-depth tutorials that teach seamless construction methods featured in French Girl Knits, providing valuable technical information for both beginning and seasoned knitters. You’ll learn how to design in a more organic way, either from the top down, from the hem up, from the back out, and by picking up live stitches when possible.

On her site, FrenchGirlKnits.com you can see Kristeen’s collections as well as her tours. She’s got a mailing list too! If you love these designs, be sure to head over to her site.

You can see a preview of this book and get your own copy on Interweave’s Site, here.

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

Have you read?