Friday, August 29, 2008

Dishcloths

Peaches & Cream - pink lemonade


It looked so lovely on the ball
But knitted up, not at all
The yellow, green and pink hue
Combined to look like dog spew


tea towel 1

I have to admit, I never 'got' the point of dishcloths. What was the point of spending all the time and money to knit what effectively was a rag to wipe up muck?

Then we needed some new tea towels and I discovered the near-impossibility of find decent quality, thick absorbent 100% cotton tea towels. Even the expensive ones seemed to have some sort of water-repelling coating and most were ridiculously thin.

One of the Australian girls on Ravelry was putting in a bulk order for Peaches & Cream cotton yarn, so I decided to get some and try to make my own. This thought hadn't come out of nowhere - in a swap I had received a small dishcloth and while I found the mixed colours rather revolting, I had to admit that it was lovely and soft and absorbent.

I bought some 'bargain' grab-bags of yarn ends which, in retrospect, was probably false economy. Postage from the US far outweighs the cost of the yarn and I would have been better off selecting a few full-priced cones in colours I liked. But even if I had have done that I may have been tempted by the 'ombres' which is Peaches & Cream speak for variegated colour yarn. Which, in my experience, rarely knits up as nicely as it looks on the ball.

But anyway, now I do 'get' the point of dishcloths. In this age of "cheaper is better", making one's own is a way of at least getting a quality product. And when the resulting colour combination looks like dog up-chuck, one has few compunctions about wiping one's handiwork on the floor!


tea towel 2

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