It's September, and the young knitter's thoughts turn to
Tank tops apparently. While everyone else is thinking about fall knitting, and cozy sweaters to wear to Rhinebeck (
grrrr!
), I was inspired to cast on for another sleeveless sweater. Granted, winter in southeast Texas starts on or about December 15th, and ends on January 31st, but still - do I need another tank top?
Regardless of whether or not I need it, I've recently become obsessed with Norah Gaughan's Basalt tank, and am screaming through it. OK, maybe not screaming through it, but it's moving fairly quickly for this time-deprived knitter. This sweater is just so clever. The entire thing is made modularly by knitting hexagons and attaching them in appropriate ways. The front is one big hexagon, and you pick up stitches along the edges to knit the rest of the pieces. The armholes are made by omitting one sixth of the hexagon, and the back is raised by adding a half hexagon. This is also a good stashbuster - I'm using some of the Brown Sheep Cotton Top
a while back.
I'm having a hard time deciding on the true color of this yarn. In this picture, it looks pretty brown, but under daylight it's more of an olive green. This picture is a bit better:
In my travels around
(love that place!), I found a very appealing modification of this sweater. The original design has hexagons on either side that hang down lower then the front edge of the sweater, conveniently highlight the hips. Or at least, it looks like they might highlight the hips. In any event,
did a great mod on her Basalt tank that I am swiping whole-hog for mine. Instead of knitting whole hexagons for the lower sides, she did half hexagons, so her sweater is straight across at the bottom. Fabulous! She also did some waist shaping on her's which looks great, but since I no longer have a waist, I'm not going to worry about it right now. If need be, once I get more of this thing done, I can go back and do waist shaping. I'm well into the first half hexagon on the sides, thanks to a very long bus trip in from the dentist's this morning. Hopefully I can finish this thing before it "cools down" around here.