Dear Ann:
Here’s a great new product I’m pleased to tell you about: the Insta-Knit Summer TopTM. You get an Insta-Knit SummerTopTM when you are going through your assorted bags and bundles of knitting-related items, and come across a top that you carried around with you last summer on vacation, and you finished the front and the back, and you sewed up one of the side seams, and then you stopped and forgot all about it because a lopapeysa was calling your name, or something.
The Insta-Knit Summer TopTM comes with a pre-threaded needle to sew up the other side seam, because you left the needle in it when you stopped and forgot all about it.
Insta-Knit Summer Tops come in all patterns, and with many types of tools left in them, but you don’t get to choose the pattern or the tools. Your last-summer self already made all those decisions, so here’s hoping she chose well.
In my case, last-summer Kay chose Vasa, by Dianna Walla. Vasa is a sweet little shell with unfinished arm and neck openings, in Shibui Linen, one of last-summer Kay’s favorite yarns that right-now Kay still adores.
Yesterday was the first day of 2016 when I felt uncomfortably warm in a lightweight merino sweater. The sun is shining, and suddenly all my black clothes are excessively somber and woolly. Clearly, it’s time to sew up Vasa. Then I can cast on Sceles, which will either be my linen top of 2016, or 2017’s Insta-Knit Summer Top.
Love,
Kay
P.S. Congrats to Ksenia T of Downers Grove, Illinois, winner of our Infinite Twist Pop Twizzle giveaway. We all want to hear how that amazing camel yarn knits up!
I’ve never clicked on a “related post” before, but was intrigued by today’s, and was delighted to find 9-year-old Carrie modelling. You’ll have to compare and contrast when you do your modelled shots of Vasa!
So funny. Love the thought of a “last-summer self.” Very quantum.
I have a couple of Insta-knit winter sweaters lying around somewhere. Your post gives me new hope for instant gratification next fall and winter! 🙂
Oooo, I wish I could find such a unfinished project in my (large) pile of same. And linen to boot…..
I have two insta knit summer tops – one just needs stitches picked up to finish the neck and armholes, the other is about 3/4 done. Fortunately I still like both!
And now you’ve introduced me to Dianna Walla, and my mental pile of knits I would like to do just grew exponentially again. Sigh.
She’s got very cool ideas. I made her Pine Bough Cowl and love it more than a baby. OK, as much as a baby. Just a beautiful, fun Fair Isle to make.
That was the one that caught my eye.
It’s gorgeous.
How ture how true. I just did similar and find it so weird I forgot all about the project and what caused me to stop.
The thing that gets me is how I could stop with just one seam to go. Did the phone ring, or what?
In reading this post, I had a niggling feeling, which prompted a thorough search of one yarn area where I too have an almost completed sweater out of Shibui Linen! Mine’s an Isabell Kraemer’s On the Beach (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/on-the-beach-6) in solid fjord. Knit from the top down, I only have one sleeve yet to finish. I remember losing stream because it ended up too big for me but does fit dear college-bound daughter well. Does an 18-year-old deserve a linen pullover?
YES! Especially if it’s only a sleeve away!
Agree!
Kay, I have an FO titled Sailor Tee. You can see it in my Rav projects. It is made of ivory Shibui linen, striped with Tar. Mine is from a Heidi Kirrmaier pattern called Lakeland. When you finish yours, let’s meet up wearing our twin tees….maybe throw in a couple of EF scarves for good measure. ;-P
I do love that linen and use it often. It is fun to work with and great to wear. Your tee is going to be fabulous!
LOL I think when we do meet it will be weird. Parallel EF lives.
I’d like to pre-pre-order an Insta-Knit Sceles, please.
That Sceles looks terrific, which is pretty much true of all of Anna Maltz’s designs. The only knock against it is that it’s openwork and has to be worn over a tank or something . . . which means that the whole outfit is liable to be too warm for summer in my part of the world. (No extra layers in summer, people! Except, of course, a shawl to fight the air-conditioning). So I’ll just have to wear Sceles in spring, by which I mean next spring because I never finish any knit project while it’s still seasonally-appropriate.
The way I look at it is that Sceles will allow me to wear a tank top, which I would never do without an openwork screen/trellis type garment on top.
Maybe I could find a sleeveless woven linen dress to wear under it – a tank-dress, if you will. That wouldn’t be too hot for summer!
I love the threaded needle 🙂
Insta-Knits! Kay, you should copyright the name and the concept! After all, Kodak had the Instamatic. . . ;-)!
However, before you really start in on the Big Damask Slipcover for a Chrysler, see today’s Knitty blog entry. They link to a Yarnsub article about swatching in which participants swatched using the same yarn and the same needles. The participants came up with swatches working out to about 5 dress sizes different in size. So, before you start singing “I’ve got me a Chrysler, It’s as big as a whale, And it’s about to set sail”, you’d better swatch (and get Ann to help, too)! (Apologies to Kaffe and the B-52s — but, yes, it made the model’s a** look enormous!)
I don’t know why I am perpetually surprised when folks say that the oversized sweaters made the models look huge. To me, a slender model wearing an oversized garment looks like a slender person wearing something too big. Period. The slender person does not look huge to me simply because the sweater is oversized.
When the Kaffe designed those sweater/coats, “oversized” was the style. Granted that style is not “in” today (sorry Dries, there’s an oversized Aran vest in your fall 2016 collection–I know, I know), however, the Big Flower coat today is a vintage treasure. Created by the one and only Kaffe Fassett, it has its own unique timeless beauty and style.
Kay, whatever adaptations you make in construction to stabilize the garment will be understandable. You will rock that sweater once you’re wearing it. I wish I could be at that debut, but seeing a picture of it here will be great. When that pic is posted, I’m sure the Kaffe will be smiling wherever he he may be.
LoveDiane
Diane, you’ve said it for me.
I love that you have not KonMari’d yourself out of mysterious(ly) unfinished projects, especially those with tools attached! I also love your time-travel comparisons. I find that I do get engrossed in fads sometimes, but generally am drawn to the same things over and over. And…who wouldn’t perpetually love a linen stripe for summer?
What a coincidence! I just finished an Insta-knit last week and didn’t even know it. It was amazing how quickly I finished it – after putting it away in a drawer last July thinking I never wanted to look at it again. It needed finishing the front from the neckline up, sewing up, and finishing the neck and armholes. Ta-da! New Custom-Fit cotton tank for summer.
Hilarious.
You’re always able to pinpoint our knitterly (autocorrected to ‘knitter oy’ – maybe that’s best!) foibles, but today’s post is primo! Too too funny, in that recognizing-oneself way. You go, girls!
Funny enough, I have a stripey Shibui Linen Insta-Knit myself – an almost-finished Dubro that I started last year. It just needs one (tiny, tiny) sleeve to be done! I love this Vasa!
My Insta-Knit was more of a Halfway Knit, alas. My third Carnival Top (in Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Cotton, pattern by Helene Rush) had less than half a peplum knitted, but seeing it on my Ravelry page eventually guilted me into pulling it out to finish. That, plus rediscovering how much I love wearing spring/summer sweaters. I finished the body a couple of weeks ago, finally cast the sleeves on on Tuesday night, and finished the sleeves tonight. A couple of rounds of neckling edging, two short sleeves to seam and set in, and it’ll be there.
Mind you, I also started and knitted half of a Tarry tee (out of Reynolds Top Seed Cotton I received courtesy of a friend’s destash), and just the night before last I dug out a UFO from at least 2008, because the pattern for it popped up when I was searching for DK weight tank tops on Ravelry. That one is maybe a third from done….its zillions of mitered squares. I forgot how potato chippy it is to knit!
So, I should have at least three new summer sweaters soon! And I have plans to cast on at least one more, but I really will wait until at least one of those is done and wearable!