Knot Right!

I know that sometimes knots show up in ball of yarn.  It is just a thing, but damn it pisses me off, especially in a ball of yarn that is 55 yards long.  Seriously, it is annoying.  I knitted myself a towel with these 2 balls of bulky cotton yarn and midway through the towel smack in the middle of a row I had a knot.  I should have tinked out the row, but knew I would need the yarn at the end.  Now I wish I had just tinked the row.  The towel is just for me so the messy middle will only bother me, but bother me it will.  Damn knots.

Kitchen Warming

A Basket Full of Dishcloths

A kitchen remodel is a good time to update kitchen linens.  Our good friends Kim & Barb (http://tempestinapot.blogspot.com/2011/10/wedding-number-3-or-iowa-revisited.html) recently updated their kitchen, and I felt they need new matching linens.  They actually spent most of the spring with no kitchen while the contractor didn't work on the stripped down room that use to be the heart of the house.  But patience and time rewarded them with a shiny, newly equipped.  Early on in the process I asked, repeatedly, what color are you painting the walls.  I am sure they got tired of hearing me ask.  One visit to their home yielded the paint sample.  A red kitchen it was.

French Stripped Tea Towel

Tabbed Tea Towel

My beautiful wife, Natalie, was convinced to join me in my secret project to knit some new kitchen towels and dishcloths for our friends.  We started in our stash and found scant red yarn to work with, but we soon had some red cotton and linen yarns on our needles.  We knit dishcloths, tea towels, a tabbed towel, a tawashi and a table runner.  Much red yarn was used.


Dishcloths Knitted by Natalie

I noticed a pattern for little, knitted, scrubby things called tawashi (unsure if that is the singular or plural).  I decided to knit one of those with the scrap yarn. It was a quick little knit, too.  I also made a pinwheel dishcloth out of the linen leftovers.  The tawashi was a success, the pinwheel dishcloth, not so much.  I was just about finished with the pinwheel when I noticed my dishcloth had a decidedly boob like look.  I was so close to being done I thought okay, too late to stop, I had to accept I knitted a boob.


Heart Shaped Tawashi

I had also thought to knit some placemats for our friends.  I had a pattern and some great, clearance yarn for my placemats.  Strangely, the yarn decided it did not want to be placemats, but a very showy table runner.  Who was I to say no, runner it was, with a lovely and time consuming I-cord edge to boot. 

Boob like Pinwheel Dishcloth

Yesterday, I amassed our knitted linens for Kim & Barb and was surprised we had knitted so much.  I mentioned to Natalie that we might have overdone it a bit.  She laughed and said wasn't that normal for us.  I only hope our friends have enough room in their new cabinets for all the kitchen towels and dishcloths we knitted.  We wish them much good dish washing in their newly redone kitchen.

Ballband Dishcloth

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

Okay, I am admitting I have problem.  Because I knit I have lots of yarn.  I am sure there are others with stash issues larger than mine, but whatever I am talking about my problem, not theirs.  Sometimes I buy yarn with projects in mind, but sometimes not.  In 2009 I made a hairpin lace wrap for my mother with 6 skeins of a cotton / acrylic blend yarn I bought in a rainbow of pastels for the project.  The DK weight yarn was 250 yards per skein.  I thought it would be just enough for a nice wrap.  The pastel colors when laid out side by side they reminded me of the marsh mellows in one of my favorite morning cereals, so I called it the "Lucky Charms Hairpin Lace Wrap."  I liked the end product and my mother seemed to like it too.  However, it left me with about a half a skein of each color or I thought about 750 yards of yarn. 

I put all the yarn in a bag and shoved it in my pie safe trying not to let it bother me that I had these half skeins just hanging out in my stash.  Most of the time I could forget they waiting in there unknitted, but occasionally it would nag at me. I would say to myself I should get that yarn out of my stash.

One day while looking at a knitting pattern book I saw just the thing for the waiting yarn, a cowl.  The design was called the "Ice Cream Cozy Cowl."  As you can guess the pattern used pastel colored yarn.  I thought that is the perfect pattern for eating up all this leftover yarn.  Now I had two things nagging me, using up the yarn and making the cowl.  Until one day I gathered the yarn, the pattern, needles and cast on.  I was convinced this cowl would relieve me of these leftovers.  Magical thinker me.

Well, that didn't happen my friend, once I was done, I still had yarn.  Lots of yarn, over 300 yards of yarn.  I guess I had more than I thought in those skeins.  Instead of just getting rid of the leftovers from the leftover yarn like a sane person might do I decided to knit a towel.  Well then I needed to knit another towel.  Still I had yarn, so in desperation I knitted a doily out of the scraps.  When done with the doily I still had about 18 inches of yarn left.  I gave myself a pass on those last inches of yarn, but I am not going to lie I kind of wished I could have used it in the doily too.

In total I knit a hairpin wrap, a cowl, 2 towels, and a doily.  I wish I could have just said no to my obsession with using up all of my yarn, but I just couldn't.  MUST knit to the last inch of yarn...At least I am admitting I have a problem.