I said I’d never make a dishcloth!

Why would anyone want to knit a dish cloth? Knitting requires time. Each stitch is worked individually. You don’t sit down at the sewing machine and knock off a dish cloth in a few minutes. I don’t know how fast others knit, but the simplest little dish cloth is going to take me a few hours. Then after it is done, what? It gets used! Thrown in soapy water, sloshed around, mangled and soon, stained. It seems like a waste of effort. Knitting should be something to be oohed and ahhed over, something to be worn and attract compliments, a shawl or a sweater perhaps. Who is going to admire a dishcloth?

Nor do I remember the women in my family knitting dishcloths. Perhaps other grandmothers did. The cotton dishcloths sold when I was a girl in the 1950s were loosely woven. Were they based on dishcloths some women had made? I don’t know. I remember my grandmother and older aunts using rags, never a hand knit dishcloth. If knitting dishcloths was something passed down through the generations, it skipped my family.

But I had a little hemp yarn left from the Cool Hemp Ponchette, not enough for a bag. I know from my own experience that hemp is very strong and gets softer the more it is washed. And I’ve read that it has antibacterial properties. I needed a mindless project, something to work on while watching the evening news or visiting with family.

I need to improve some of my knitting for the Masters program. I have to learn to make a seed stitch without holes, cables and decreases without stretched stitches. Hemp isn't the best fiber for working on tension, it has a will of its own. But it is good practice. So I knit a dishcloth.

To make it more interesting, I knit it on the diagonal:

Cast on 3
Knit 2 rows,
K2, yo, seed stitch until 2 stitches before end, k2,
Repeat until half of yarn is used, then start decreasing,
K1, K2tog, yo, seed stitch until 2 stitches before end, K2,
Repeat until 3 stitches remain, knit 3, turn and bind off.
And because I still had yarn, I added a border in single crochet.

Easy enough!

I don’t do anything half way. I jump in with both feet. So, when I decided to knit one dish cloth, I also decided to order some Peaches & Creme to knit more. There were so many colors to choose from and I figured shipping was less per ball the more balls I ordered, so I now have 24 balls of Peaches & Creme.

This fall I’ll be working on the quality of my stitches while making dish cloths to wrap Christmas cookies and breads to give as little gifts. Unfortunately I didn’t buy any Christmas colors. I have to order those now.

Linen Ponchette - This one is for me!

“What are you going to do with all those shawls?” my friend, Nancy asks me. She would like to see me knit pieces to include in my quilts and wall hangings. Nancy's quilts were always works of art. Now after years of perfecting her piecing and quilting skills, she is flourishing as a fiber artist making art quilts.

Yes, I’ve knitted a lot of shawls, scarves and ponchettes. And I’m knitting more. But I really don’t have too many because after I knit them, I give them away. When a daughter, sister, or friend admires something I’ve made, I might give it to her right then. Or I might wait until her birthday. I am happy when my work is admired, when I know it will be worn. It is what an artist feels when her work is hung in a gallery. As a knitter, having my work worn, is having it displayed. Isn't that what every artist wants?

And giving one away gives me reason to knit another. So, when my daughter admired the Cool Hemp Ponchette knit in Allhemp6, it was hers. I had another planned.

This time I knit the pattern in Euroflax sport weight linen. It was the color, willow, that first drew me to the yarn. This was my first experience knitting with linen and I found it behaved very much like the hemp although the linen wasn’t quite as rough and itchy on my hand. Once again this was a quick, easy to knit pattern. After knitting the basic rectangle that forms the ponchette, I tossed it in the washing machine with a load of whites (no bleach!), then into the dryer. I took it out while still damp, blocked it to the size recommended in the pattern as I would any lace project, stretching out the points as much as I could. When it was dry I seamed it. The linen and the hemp both biased quite a bit but the pattern seemed designed for that and the ponchette hangs with a bit of swing and a casual elegance to dress up a warm day.

I’m going to wear it.

The Cool Hemp Ponchette and Learning to Take Better Pictures

After I posted the picture of my Cool Hemp Ponchette, I found this comment,

“I really like this one, Mom!”

So, of course, it was hers. But before she was allowed to take it home, I needed a picture of her modeling the ponchette. So here it is. This picture is better than the one I posted earlier and not just because the model is 33 years younger than her mother!

Nor can the difference be attributed to the skill of the photographer. Both were taken by my husband, a professional videographer who knows how to take good pictures.

The white tee shirt I wore in the earlier picture was not a good idea. Despite having been repeatedly told not to wear white in photographs, I thought I needed contrast to show the stitch definition and I didn't think the white would be too harsh under the ponchette. I was wrong. The stitch definition is clear in the pictures of my daughter while the color of the tee shirt she happened to have on is neither jarring nor unattractive.

I've decided to spend some time learning to take better pictures of my work and hopefully you'll see improvements in those I post. I’ll share the lessons as I learn them.

Cool Hemp Ponchette

I’m wearing my new Cool Hemp Ponchette made without deviation from the Lanaknits pattern. And I like it! The design in the lace shows up clearly, the opening folds into a slight cowl and the hemp has a lovely drape. It is a fun little cover up to add just a touch of style to my tee shirts. Later I’ll be meeting a friend for lunch and the ponchette will dress me up just a bit. And it's always nice to have a wrap in a restaurant with the air conditioner running on high.

I’m very impressed with the way the ponchette drapes. You can see this on many of the project pictures other knitters have posted on Ravelry. After knitting, I washed it in the washer and dried it in the dryer until almost dry. Then I laid it out on the blocking mats and blocked it to size, stretching out each of the points in the lace border.

This was the first time I’d knit with hemp and I’m curious to see how it wears. I know it will be both soft and strong. I know it will be soft because after I redid the seam three times to get it to meet my standards, that little bit of yarn was soft as silk. And I know it’s strong because as soon as I put it on this morning I caught a bit of the lace on the sharp edge of a house fan and pulled out a big loop of yarn. I gave it a good tug and all the strands were nicely back in place.

Knitting with hemp was like knitting with kitchen twine. It seemed to make my fingers itch and its resistance to being manipulated exacerbated my early arthritis. After I was done I read on the Lanaknits website a suggestion to soak the hemp in hot water and hair conditioner before knitting. I’ll try that next time. The end product is so nice I don’t want the stiffness of the yarn to keep me from using it.