I found a bag of mixed yarns at the thrift shop the other day. Two skeins of a ribbon with a matching ball of highly textured yarn, one cone of bulky white cotton, and a ball-and-a-bit of Sugar’n Cream in variegated pink.
A long time ago, giving a new homeowner a set of hand-made washcloths knit or crocheted from Sugar’n Cream yarn was the thing to do. I made a dishcloth once, when I accompanied a girlfriend to WalMart to buy something to knit on a weekend at the beach. I didn’t like the way the dishcloth stretched when wet, and my kitchen runs to heavy staining from spilled coffee. Variegated pink-with-white will not work.
But I wanted the ribbon, and I am on a quest to understand the problem of “when it IS your grandmother’s needlepoint.”
Now I’m knitting a dishcloth.
I’ll knit out the ball; need to measure to figure out when to start the decrease so I get as close as I can to the end, making the largest cloth possible. (3X yarn per row should give me enough; count and measure the rows.)
Here’s my thinking: I’m going to knit something anyway. I am always knitting. Turning this unwanted (it was at the thrift shop) yarn into something useful is a good thing. I can use it in the bathroom, where I don’t wipe up coffee. When the dishcloth gets too stained to use anymore, it can go into the compost heap–the cotton will disintegrate, in time.
