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Remember Clapotis? Now You Can Make it a Shirt

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clafoutis knit shirt patternThe 15th year of Knitty has been a lot of fun because they have published a lot of projects that were inspired by patterns that had previously been published in the online knitting magazine.

One of the most popular patterns ever was Kate Gilbert’s Clapotis, published in the fall of 2004 (fun fact: I’ve actually never knit one, though I would still like to).

For the recently released spring/summer issue, Merri Fromm has reimagined that iconic wrap as the bottom of a shirt, and she called hers Clafoutis.

This is probably the perfect little shirt for summer. The color is great, those dropped stitches make it cool and because the “skirt” is really two pieces worked flat that aren’t sewn together (though you could if you wanted) you get that little extra bit of ventilation, too.

If you’re looking for something to knit for a day on the beach (or to knit at the beach), this just may be the thing.

What do you think? Did you knit a Clapotis? What do you think of the update?

[Photo: Merri Fromm.]

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Tips for Picking the Right Color Yarn for Your Project

I have never been all that picky about the colors I use in knitting projects. When choosing colors for projects to go in my books, I try to pick colors that go together in individual projects and also to use a variety of colors among the projects in the book, so while I love blue and green I make sure to throw in orange and yellow as well, for example.

When knitting projects for myself I’m usually using stash so whatever I have is good enough. Or if I do happen to be buying yarn for a project, it’s usually more about the texture or fiber content of the yarn first, then choosing a color I like, rather than having a color in mind then finding a yarn with that in its line.

Marie at Olive Knits was looking for the perfect green yarn to replace a store bought sweater, and she found that picking out exactly the right shade was trickier than she expected.

She wrote a blog post full of tips for finding the right yarn when you’re looking for a particular color.

I think the hardest part of this these days is that we tend to do so much online shopping for yarn, either because we don’t have a local yarn store, we can’t get what we want locally or we want to support independent makers who live elsewhere. And if you’ve ever received yarn that isn’t quite the color you were expecting you know what I’m talking about.

One of her tips, then, is to look at a color swatch for the yarn you’re thinking about buying on every monitor or device you have available because it probably will look different on different screens (and maybe different still in person, and under different lighting conditions, or if you use it in a project with other colors…).

Check out her post for more tips on finding the right color for your project.

[Photo: Olive Knits.]

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