I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is having a safe New Year’s Eve. My husband and I are staying home, and I haven’t checked with the cats, but I think they plan on staying in too. They aren’t much for fireworks, and there are sure to be some around here tonight.
I was thinking about this year, and I realized that my knitting has been off and on the whole year. I’ve not posted as much as I should have, but it has been one of those years. Every time I settled into a project, it seems that something interrupted me and I lost interest in it. However, I have knitted more than I’ve shown you. I’ll show you some photos of some new dishcloths I’ve made recently.
Dishcloths
This is the Christmas Ornament dishcloth from Harvest Moon Designs. This is a lot of fun to make, and I thought it turned out quite pretty.
This dishcloth is the Poinsettia cloth that we made in the KAL. It was fun to knit, but it makes a rectangle. If I do it again, I’ll make it differently. I intended to make it into a towel, and when I got to the end of the pattern of the flower, I decided I wouldn’t because it was narrower than I wanted a towel to be. I did make the side borders deeper, though, to help square it up some. You can see that didn’t do the trick completely, though.
I think this is one of the prettiest dishcloths I’ve made. It’s just another one of the Darrell Waltrip dishcloths like I’ve made before, but the pink and white are so refreshing, that it’s a favorite of mine. You can find the pattern at Rhonda White’s site.
Bread Warmers
This funny little piece of knitting is a warming blanket for biscuits. You can find the pattern here. It has a one row buttonhole in each corner, and the two stitch idiot cording goes through that to tie the blanket closed to keep your biscuits warm. I made it a little bigger than the pattern called for by using a size 7 knitting needle. Mine came out about 9″ square when it is folded and tied closed.
I had a little basket I found in a sale bin a long time ago. I thought it was a charming basket, but one of the eyes of the duck was missing. I knew I could fix it, so I bought the basket for maybe a dollar, intending to make a sewing basket of it. I’ve juggled that basket around in a cabinet ever since, vowing one of these days to get some glue and some buttons and fix an eye for that duck. After I saw that pattern for the biscuit warmer, I thought this was the time to finally finish that project. So I pulled the other eye off and glued a white shirt button with a black doll button in the center of it to either side of the duck’s head. I think my little make-do basket looks pretty cute. I have a warming stone that fits in the bottom of the basket, so I believe my biscuits will stay warm now.
Here’s another biscuit blanket I made. This one went much faster. As I was knitting this, I ran out of the ball of blue and white variegated yarn I was using, but I had another ball of the same brand I’d bought at the same time, so I finished with that. It wasn’t until after I’d finished the whole thing and washed it that I noticed the colors had different lengths. Look at how one half of the blanket is pretty widely striped, and the other has narrower stripes. Talk about surprised. How could I have not seen that while I was knitting it? I suppose the colors won’t matter that much in a project like this, but after knitting all the socks I have, you’d have thought I’d have seen that. Live and learn.
Reading
I’m still reading my Aubrey-Maturin series. I’m reading The Truelove right now. I’m going to be so sorry to see this series end.
I’ve also been reading Sharon Miller’s Shetland Hap Shawls, Then and Now. You can order it from her at her site. She’s quite prompt at filling orders, and the book is full of the history of the Hap Shawl. I thought it was interesting that the women knitted the shawls for merchants who sold them in England and elsewhere. (It was a bit like our coal miners working for the company store.) They bartered for some of the goods they needed as payment; of course, what the women got for their shawls wasn’t enough or even fair. Moreover, bartering was illegal, so there was an investigation into it in the 1870’s, and Sharon includes some of the testimony given at that inquiry. It’s interesting to hear those women’s own words telling about how hard their lives were.
While most of the shawls are very similar, there are differences, and Sharon gives patterns for the various styles of Hap Shawls. If you like this kind of shawl, or if you like to read the history of knitting, you’ll want to get this book. I know it’s a bit pricey, but those 64 pages are crammed full of information. This has been a little investigated area of knitting, so it’s good to see a book out on it.
Happy New Year!