Dishcloths...dishcloths...dishcloths...

It seems like these days when I'm not doing dishes I'm knitting dishcloths. Why you ask? Why would anyone want to spend time to make something to wash the dishes with? There are many reasons really...Dishcloth yarn is cheap,the projects are small and easy to take with you, AND the finished project is useful. The one pictured to the left is just a color work sampler...I wanted to see what certain slip stitch patterns looked like so instead of knitting up a swatch that would be useless later I can knit up a dishcloth to learn a new skill. Another reason is my kids love them and use them as blankets for toys both in the bath and out... in fact my daughters are always asking "Is that one for me???" Dish/washcloths also make great last minute gifts with a nice bar of soap or other bath product.

I was looking at patterns on Ravelry and found a spring washcloth that I designed as a weekly KAL on one of the groups... somebody had taken the time to link my pattern in Ravelry. It made me feel somewhat famous. I listed my wheat washcloth too... and now other people are making dishcloths that I designed... How cool is that? Cool might not be the right word... but hey I'm happy about it.

Here are a few of the dishcloths I've made recently...The links below are links to the pattern pages in case anyone is interested in making one.

I made this one for a KAL (Knit along)...This one gave me a bit of trouble. For some reason when I got to the fourth repeat of the pattern the dang thing was so long it looked more like a dish towel than a cloth. My original plan was to go one more repeat and make it into a fancy burp cloth (I did it in a variegated baby color yarn)… but on my 4th repeat I ended up with too many stitches and then too few so I frogged it back to the 3rd repeat (or there abouts) put the border on and made it BACK into a dishcloth.
It wasn’t that it was terribly hard… and I love the idea of the off center lace pattern… I just got frustrated with it at the very end.

I made this one as a prize for the Iron Chef contest in Jenn's Kitchen (my recipe group on yahoo). This wasn’t the easiest dishcloth… but it certainly wasn’t that hard either. As always with any pattern that has yo and ssk if you have to go back due to a mistake or dropped stitch it is a pain… but since it is just dishcloth size it’s really no biggie either. I like the smaller size…and I think it’ll make a great gift. I’ll put it in the mail tomorrow.

Here is my first crochet project. I know it's nothing special... but hey I'm proud. I usually knit and haven't had much luck with crochet.

And here is what I'm working on now... I should finish it in a jiffy.