Saturday, December 26, 2009

No, I Can't Buy You a Dishwasher.

Homer Simpson Dishcloth
Project #43 in '50 in 2009 Challenge'- Homer Simpson Dishcloth

Several weeks ago when I asked my brother-in-law what he would like for Christmas, his response was a dishwasher. I told him, surely you know I can't buy you a dishwasher, but I did get an idea of what I could give him - my most favorite cleaning device ever - a pot scraper* (like seen on the left of the second image in this post).

So I didn't end up only giving him a small 89 cent piece of plastic for Christmas (ok, plus the magazine subscription he requested), I decided to knit him up a couple of dishcloths to make a nearly complete dishwashing system.

Plus it would give me a chance to use some of my cotton stash as I've decided 2010 will be the year of finishing things (including my stash of yarn & fabric - I've finally realized that I will almost buy new materials for a new project), so why not give myself a bit of a head start.

I really enjoy doing patterns like this Homer Simpson dishcloth because with every row changing, it holds my attention and I don't tend to space out and make mistakes. Weird, I know.

I started with one of my mid-size balls of left over cotton, thinking I could surely get an entire dishcloth out of it. But as you can see, that didn't happen! Man, my eye for estimation is going out the window. And the funny thing is it happened again with the next color. A good thing for the stash busting though.


Chinese Waves Dishcloth
Project #48 in "50 in 2009 Challenge" - Chinese Waves Dishcloth

And since one dishcloth certainly could not be enough, I had to make him a second. Actually, I would have preferred that there had been a third as well, but considering I was knitting the Chinese Waves the morning of the day we left, I just didn't have enough time. You may notice that it's a bit squatter than what you may normally see with a dishcloth. That's because I decided I needed to have it done before we left so I could work on the last two projects of the year during our drives, so I could actually make it to 50 this year. It's probably easier to handle as well. I mean, it is only a dishcloth. There are no real size requirements.

The Chinese Waves pattern confused me a bit. You were only given four rows of the pattern, but when I went to repeat the 3rd row (the 4th was just a straight knit), it messed up the look of the pattern. I must have messed something up, but I couldn't figure out what I did wrong, so from there on out I just repeated rows 1 & 2 until it was large enough to stop. I say, oh well, it's only a dishcloth to be used on gross, dirty dishes. It doesn't need to be perfect.

I see a lot more dishcloths in my future. As I mentioned before 2010 will be my year for finishing things (so no '50 in 2010' - I need a break from the stress of trying to make it to the magic number). Though I'd like to say I'm going to clear out the yarn stash I have, I know it's not practical, I'm just not that fast of a knitter. But I do think I can clear out the stash of cotton I have, so it is very possible that everyone will be getting dishcloths next Christmas. Though then again, maybe all my cotton won't yield as much as I think it will.

We shall see. We shall see.





*I can't remember if I've touted the amazingness of this cheap piece of plastic before. We got ours at Ace Hardware, seriously 89 cents. Gets all the burned on crap off without having to use sponges or copper scrubbies, and you just throw it into the utensil basket to clean it right up. Copper scrubbies are great, but can get disgusting really fast, making me want to toss them before they were fully used. I cannot recommend the pot scraper enough, a much more environmentally-conscious method for cleaning dishes (I also find I don't need to use as much running water to rinse & scrap as I did to rinse & scrub). And hey, some hand knit dishcloths don't hurt either - I find them to be much more effective than store bought ones.

1 comment:

The Jesse said...

i love the homer wash cloth =)