Another FO, and progress

I got quite a bit of progress done last night.

First, the unfinished washcloth:



I joined the Monthly Dishcloth group on yahoo groups oh... almost a year ago. And I was really on the bandwagon for a while. They feed you a pattern 5-10 lines at a time, twice a month. The first pattern of the month is usually a seasonal- or holiday-themed knit and purl pattern. The second pattern is usually a bit of lace or some other the technique. I tend to skip the first pattern of the month and take on the second one, because they are nice, bite-sized projects that are just challenging enough to be interesting without being overwhelming. The only issue with this new obsession was that no one in our house uses washcloths, and I prefer sponges to dishrags. So... what to do?

Well, at about the same time, I decided to try my hand at recycling sweaters. One of the first to get butchered was a cotton pull-over from the Gap. This left me with copious amounts of dk-weight cotton. It was very soft, but the unraveling process unplied it. I didn't think reknitting into a sweater was the way to go, but thought instead it would be perfect for the dishcloth projects, and it became my yarn of choice. I used size 4 needles instead of 7 or 8s, and they knit up to about half the size. They are perfect for face-cloths, and my daughters like to use them to wash up after eatting.

But then one day while working on the one above, I lost my place in the pattern and no matter how many times I counted rows, I was coming up in the wrong spot. So, it got set aside. For, oh, 6 months at least.

When I picked it up again yesterday, I realized I'd skipped a few rows and that's why I wasn't able to figure out where I was by row count. So, I frogged back and reknit. In the reknitting, I didn't go back far enough, so there is an elongated row of "leaves" in the finished item, but you know what? It's a face cloth. I'm not going to sweat it. It's off the needles now. Bing, bang, boom.



Obviously, that is unblocked. That's one of the things with using recycled yarn; even though you wash it and weight it to remove the kinks, there are still some left, so anything you knit from it looks really wonky until it's been blocked.

Then I moved on to another project. This one is a cabeled bag that was my Learn to Do Cabels project. I took this class at the same LYS where I learned entrelac and had a similar experience. First of all, the owner wrote up the pattern, and it was both incomplete and unclear. It was a bit like studying French all year and getting to the final exam and finding that it's in Spanish. Yeah, you can sort of figure out what you are reading and are being asked to do, but it takes a lot of extra time and thought. Also, the yarn estimates were way too low and after hitting the half-way mark, I realized I would need to knit the strap one ribbing repeat narrower so it would be long enough. And even now it's not long enough. I'd like it to be long enough to wear as a messenger bag, but I'm afraid it's going to be a longish-strapped tote instead. I couldn't even get more yarn to add to the length, because the yarn was hand-dyed by the owner and it was the last skein of that color. As it is, I got the front and back pieces knit with only about 1 yard of yarn left to sew it all together, so I had to go buy another hank of the green so I could finish it off. This was another class o'frustration for those of us in attendance.



All that said, though, I actually really, really like this bag. I went and got fabric to line it with, oh, AGES ago. And then it sat in its little UFO cubby for months and months and months because of my severe aversion to sewing. But, last night I got it out and steam blocked it and sewed the ends of the strap together.



I had every intention of assembling it in preparation for lining, but I got a little carried away with the steam and it ended up pretty wet, so I had to leave it to dry over night.

Instead, I pulled out the mohair lace scarf to work on.



This is some Skacel mohair that I got from the goodie bag at Stitch and Pitch last year. I wasn't all that thrilled with how it was working up. It had a pretty high yawn-factor. So, I frogged it 2 or 3 times trying different stitch patterns until I found one I liked. And, I can't show you an updated photo, because, well, I REALLY like it and I think I may try to pitch it somewhere. It's being reborn as a cravat instead of a scarf. Also, switching from bamboo to metal needles made the yarn much faster to knit with.

So, yeah, that's all the stuff I got done yesterday afternoon and evening. The kids were very content to play on their own last night, so I had a lot of time with my hands free and was exceptionally productive! w00t!