Welcome to Project Knitway or should I say Project Renottaway? It's my cyberspace place to post my favorite things...thoughts about family and creativity and design. One of my favorite things is making stuff, specifically clothing and accessories from fiber and metal. So you'll see a lot about that here. I also love spending time with my family, so there will be a bit about that too. When I'm not with my family or in my studio, I am most likely at nextdoor, my store. I have always had a store ever since I was a young woman. I started with a weaving store called the niddy noddy in Waukesha eons ago. I ended with nextdoor in Brookfield. It's my dream store filled with great clothing, especially denim. Really nice women work and shop there, it's a fun place to be. You can find us there every day and online at www.shopatnextdoor.com So come for a visit here and there.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Rectangles

The great thing about understanding stitch and row gauge is that you can throw all those patterns away and design your own. Most sweaters are just simple rectangles put together, so all you have to do is plug in the gauge to the size pieces you need and knit away. In this piece I simply knit two long rectangles for the body of the tunic and one for the collar. Once again I used my faux rib technique of 4 stitches in work and 2 out, except for one little twist. I e wrapped on 100 stitches, every needle and knit 50 's at tension 8. Then I put two stitches out of work and four in work, knit 90 rows and cast off. So basically I knit the sweater upside down.

Next I steamed the pieces and shaped the neckline. I was fortunate to host a workshop with Elizabeth Zimmerman years ago at my first little yarn store (that's a story for another time). She demonstrated how she knit a piece and cut it apart to create the neck opening. All the knitters were aghast at the idea of actually cutting into a piece of knit fabric, but it worked and I have enjoyed that technique ever since. I'm all about time saving steps. So basically I drew the neckline on the front piece, in this case a large scoop 9 inches wide and 3 inches deep. and serged it off with my serger. If you don't have a serger you can use a combination of straight stitch and zig zag to get a similar effect. Once that was done, I knit the collar casting on 110 stitches, faux rib, and knitting 50 rows. I sewed all the pieces together to create this colorful tunic. The yarn Amazing, by Lion Brand,was amazing. It's a great combination of wool and nylon and is artfully blended in beautiful colors. I  plan to use it alot.