Dishcloth Deluge

There ain't no way to glam this up, so I'm not even going to try. I was in W*lm*rt the other day and got caught up in the new-to-me colours of Bernat Handicrafter cotton. I went on a discloth spree. Since I've got nothing else, I'm going to share it with you. Aren't you lucky? :-)

Did you know they now make self-striping cotton?



If you want precision, you'll have to stripe it yourself, but it's not too bad. This is a colourway called Country. The pattern is, of course, the Ballband -- ubiquitous, not infamous -- and available lots of places but I used the one from here.

They also have a new colour series out that they call "Naturals." Here's a 4 Corners in Chocolate Ombre, a mix of dark brown, tan and white.



And a Garterlac in Earth Ombre - beige, brown and grey.



Here's something from the "How does that work?" department:


It's the Petal cloth in the Desert Rising colourway. I like the design and what it does for the colours, but I had a few problems with the pattern. As written, for sport weight yarn, it would have come out about the size of a coaster. Once I figured out how it worked, I enlarged it by (a) changing the cast-on to 155 stitches; (b) doing the first purl rows as 31 instead of 21; (c) changing the pattern from K 8, 7, 6... to K 13, 12, 11 .... ; and (d) picking up 14 instead of 9. The pick-up still gave me trouble. The pattern asks that you pick up and purl. I'm not really sure what that means exactly, and I think I did it four different ways. I'm not really happy with any of them. I should have dug out my Horst Schultz books, but I was too lazy. Maybe next time.

Still in the experimental but desert-type mood:



I remembered how much I loved Aija's beautiful adaptation for her Lizard Ridge afghan, so I had to give it a try in Country Brown Ombre. It didn't turn out too bad, and was actually a lot of fun to knit. When you just knit all the rows that don't have short rows, it's quick and easy, and flat instead of bumpy. Very cool.

Then, since I was still in the "How does that work?" department, I tried out that nifty little knitter's magic trick:


Checkerboard Illusions cloth, in green and cream.

By then, I was feeling a little silly and giddy, so I went with it:


Here's a fancy one for when the Queen comes to visit and wants to wash my dishes.

And even sillier:

The Skully cloth. I'm not much into pictures, but this was too cool to resist.

I think I've finally got all that out of my system and shall now return to my socks.