An Old-Fashioned Project for Frugal Times

Parents, on Day Two of a five-day cross-country road trip: "Kids! Sit up and look at the scenery!" Kids, continuing their lying-down-in-the-backseat game of Feet Fight: "We know! We looked at it yesterday!"

I used to know a lady who knit her own dishcloths. At the time, it seemed to me like an odd thing to be doing. I do remember that she said that all of her many grandchildren wanted these dishcloths because they liked them so much, so she just kept on making them. 

Well, these are frugal times. Faced with riding shotgun on a trip across the West Texas plains the other day (hence the scenery quote above), I grabbed up some leftover Sugar 'n Cream yarn and some needles, and I discovered that the trip to Lubbock is exactly one dishcloth long, as is the trip back. After first trying a very complicated dishcloth pattern that required constant thought and way too much yarn, I made up a simpler one of my own. I hope you like it. Heck, I hope you understand it, because this is my first time to write down a knitting pattern of my own devising. 

Clairz's Dishcloth Pattern

Sugar 'n Cream 4-ply self-striping cotton yarn (one skein will make 2 cloths)

No. 7 knitting needles 

Cast on 36 st.

Row 1-5: Knit

(You don't really have to count the rows. You'll know you are ready for the upcoming Long Stitch Row when you have three ridges on the right side (you can always tell the right side because the tail from casting on will be on the right).

Row 6, Long Stitch Row: K1, *yo, K1, repeat from * to end of row.

Row 7: K all knit stitches, let yo's slip off the end of the left needle as you come to them. Thus, K1, slip one off, repeat across row, ending with K1.

Row 7 takes the place of Row 1 from here on out, so you just K another 4 rows in order to have three ridges, and continue on from there. I made my cloths with 6 repeats (just count 6 Long Stitch Rows), ending with three ridges. (You will see from the photo below that sometimes my three ridges turned into four. This is a very forgiving pattern, obviously).

Cast off in K. Weave ends in.

By the way, these dishcloths are an absolute pleasure to use. Good grief, what an old-fashioned statement! Oh, well, in tough times, it's the small pleasures that get us through the day--right?

This is the perfect size project for a beginning knitter.