Knitty is Celebrating the Clapotis

If you were around at the beginning of the knitting Internet, you might remember the Clapotis (pronounced, apparently, clap-o-tee; I’ve been saying it wrong in my head for 20 years!). Originally published in the fall 2004 issue of Knitty, it could be argued it was the first viral knitting pattern of the Internet age.

It’s easy to see why it took off: it’s fun to knit, pretty easy, stylish, you can use wild or more subdued yarn and it looks great. Plus, dropping stitches on purpose is just fun.

I have still yet to knit one, even though I’ve wanted to a few times.

Now I have no excuse, because to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the pattern, Knitty has reissued it and has declared Clapotis Fest. They produced a digital look book with the pattern worked in yarn from 63 different indie dyers (which is just a drop in the dye bucket compared to the nearly 24,000 versions that have been posted on Ravelry).

They’re also hosting a contest where you can win some of that gorgeous yarn by submitting a photo of your (newly knit since Sept. 17, 2024) Clapotis. Entries must be submitted by Dec. 1 and will be included in a similar flip book style presentation, which will be part of the Knitty winter surprise early next year. People who look at the book can vote for their favorites, and the top 50 vote-getters will get some lovely yarn (folks with the most votes will get to pick their prizes first).

Part of the point of this celebration, in addition to getting people excited about the pattern again and sharing the work of some great indie dyers, is to also honor the designer, Kate Gilbert. She was paid $50 for the pattern in 2004, and of course Knitty is free so no one has profited much from the huge popularity of this design, but Kate definitely should. If you knit a Clapotis, or have in the past, you can send her a few bucks through her Ko-fi.

I’d love to hear your Clapotis stories. Have you made one or several before? Had you ever heard of it before now? Thinking about making one? I think it might just be time for me to do it!

[Photo via Knitty]

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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