Not a Lot to Blog About

It's been a fairly quiet week around here. We've been watching the Olympics; as of last night, Canada leads the race in gold medals, not total medal count, but gold. We now have ten, with Germany at nine and the US at eight.

Knitting has been on the back burner, I'm afraid. It's a little difficult to concentrate on a colourwork pattern or lace when you're watching the Olympics. I did, however, make some progress on the test knit mittens, as you can see here...


I'm almost up to the top shaping. All in all, these mittens will be a little larger than Heather's previous designs which, I've been told, is a good thing. Apparently she's had some comments about her previous mittens being on the small side; they fit my hands just right, so I must have smaller than average hands. At any rate, these are really pretty mittens and I'm having fun knitting them, just not while watching the Olympics!


I don't think I've shown you the palm side of the mittens before. If you're not familiar with mitten construction, the white thread you see where there should be a thumb is where the thumb will be knitted after the rest of the mitten is finished.

For the sake of review, the yarn is Knit Picks Palette, which has just become my new favourite mitten-knitting yarn, and I'm using 2.25 mm needles.

I did cast on one small mindless knitting project. A few years back, 2007 to be precise, I made a facecloth for myself, using a textured stitch I hadn't seen in any stitch dictionary. I posted the pattern back then and decided it was time to make another one.


This time, though, I've had to warn John that if he even thinks about using this one to clean the bathroom, he'd be in huge trouble! That's right, shortly after I made the previous one, I found it in the cleaning bucket. He'd decided it was old (I think it had only been laundered a couple of times) and that it would be perfect for cleaning the bathroom because of the nubbly texture. I was NOT happy, but once it had been used for cleaning, I wasn't going to wash my face with it. I had better not find this one in the cleaning bucket... ever!

The pattern is really simple. Cast on about 50 stitches on 3.75 mm needles (that's what I'm using); stitch count doesn't really matter, as long as it's an even number. I'm getting a gauge of 6 stitches per inch, making this cloth just over 8" square. Knit one row.

Row 1: *k1, p1; repeat from * to end of row
Row 2: Knit
Row 3: *k1, p1; repeat from * to end of row
Row 4: Purl

Work these four rows until your facecloth is the size you want. Work one knit row and cast off.

That's it! When I first made this pattern, I remember being a little confused (even though I wrote it!) trying to figure out whether I should be working a knit row or a purl row. This time, I've realized that when you're working the k1, p1 row, whatever the row below looks like is what you'll work on the next row.

For instance, after you've worked a knit row, the purl bumps of that row are showing when you work the ribbed row; that tells you that the next row will be a purl row; and after you've worked a purl row, the knit side will be showing when you work the ribbed row, so the next row will be...... right... knit! See? Easy!

I liked my first facecloth so much that I might have to make a few; I'm pretty sure I still have a few balls of cotton yarn in my stash. The texture of this stitch is great for gentle exfoliation and the cotton washes well. And, if nothing else, apparently they make great bathroom cleaning "rags".