FO: Chevron Handtowel

Finally, I’ve completed the Chevron Hand Towel from MDK! Well, that is, I decided to throw in the towel. Hah! The pattern in MDK calls for quite a few more repeats, but I chose to end the project basically when I had used up one ball each of my selected yarn (Crystal Palace Breeze, a mercenized cotton). So, my towel is more like a large square rather than a long, large rectangle. Which is fine with me, since this project took me about 3 weeks!! Well, I only knitted on it intermittently while watching TV.

After washing in the delicate cycle (just with lavender sweater soap), I tugged at it quite a lot to make it square and not trapezoidal. I don’t know if this is common with chevron stitches or something to do with my tension while knitting, but there was quite a trapezoidal thing going on. It squared up pretty well, though, and once dry it is now soft and drapey and really quite nice. Now we need to remodel our bathroom so that there are some special hangers for hand towels.  Is it unusual to want to remodel your home to better incorporate hand knits?

Specs for this project were posted here.

Check out the wonderful drape, but I’ll tell you that the fabric is actually not loose, but rather it is dense and practical.

The garter stitch borders contain the chevron pattern really well:

 

Chevron Handtowel

• Patt: MDK
• Yarn: Crystal Palace Breeze in “Celery” and “Indigo” (my names for the colors)–100% mercenized cotton
• US 5

I started this on 2/7/07, and have been noodling about with it. I haven’t been that productive due to lots of work and stress leaving me feeling knocked out every evening. But I am chugging along, and I’m going to start a fun sock soon to pick up my spirits.

 

Mom’s dish cloths

I’ve completed Mom’s set of dishcloths for the Holidays. I had some fun with the ballband pattern this time – made it less wide (CO 33 st) and rectangular in shape. I CO using the double-crochet method so it has a pretty top edge.

The matching cloth is a diagonal ridge pattern from the SnC label. I changed colors a lot so I have lots of ends to weave in.

However…

At last night’s Knit Night, I learned a trick to WEAVE IN THE ENDS AS YOU GO ALONG. It is genius. Credit goes to Salli Sternberg. Thank you!!!

Now I just have to weave in all these ends, but this’ll be the last time!!

 

Dishrag orders

Mom and Kristine liked the dishrags I made,so I showed them what color yarns I had and they picked out some combinations. I am going to try and make them a couple each for the Holidays.

Mom chose these colors:

Kristine chose a more vivid combo:

 

Warsh Rags!

I have completed three warsh-rags from the MDK school of knitting.

1. Using Cascade Luna (100% cotton, kind of twisty, deep but natural colors), I made a green/yellow ballband. It came out quite big and a little too stretchy and holey for my taste. Great yarn though – it just needs a smaller needle at least for me.

2. Then I went and bought a whole bunch of Sugar n Creme from the local Michaels. It was on sale so each ball cost $1.75. Wow-cheap! I made another ballband, this time in pink and “recreation” – it is very Scooby Doo but actually matches our kitchen. The result was much tighter, even using size 7 needles, and waffle-ly-er. Nice!

3. Next was the MDK 9-patch dishrag. This was fun in Sugar and Creme pink and “recreation” again, and came out great! I learned a lot about mitres and also picking up stiches. I picked up the stiches on the WS to get the kitchy-quilty look. (I don’t especially like weaving in ends, though.)

I like the idea of having a stash of dishrag cotton to keep around. I am going to show Mom and Kristine the pink set of dishrags and see if they want a set; they can pick out their colors.