Weekly Dishcloth(s): Running Late

It was with mounting dread that I knitted as fast as I could last Saturday, but for naught. Work, life, and sport-weight yarn had worked against me. Last week's dishcloth just wasn't going to happen last week.

Better late than never, though, right?

Week 9:

Maritime Facecloth, by Allison Griffith
Knit Picks Simply Cotton Sport, Golden Heather

This is basically a modification on the very basic garter washcloth knit on the bias, with cables! I found that the recommended increase (backwards loop) left ladders beside the right cable, so I switched to a lifted bar increase (m1) to try and tighten things up. The left side was fine. This is definitely a washcloth as opposed to a dishcloth in my opinion; a few in baby colors would make darling shower gifts, especially paired with a bottle of baby shampoo.

Week 10:

Be My Dishcloth
Peaches & Creme, Bright Pink

The Knit Picks dishcloth of the week was perfectly feasible, but I just didn't have enough of the color that I really wanted to use, and since I gave up buying yarn for Lent, and I had a half-finished dishcloth on the needles from Valentine's Day anyway, I cheated a bit.

This dishcloth is meant to be knitted at an absurd gauge, and since I opted to use the recommended needle size instead of going up a couple as I normally do (as I already knit absurdly tightly), the effect was compounded and since once this is washed it will shrink down even tighter... well, my hands hurt and this thing is like a piece of sheet metal. Size 3 needles and worsted weight cotton were never meant to meet this way, but if you try to knit it at a sane gauge, you end up with a ginormous piece of cloth, more of a dishbedsheet. I think this really ought to be done in sport-weight; it would make an admittedly less sturdy dishcloth, but a stunning washcloth.

The other issue I encountered with this pattern that slowed me way down: the instructions are written so that the chart stitches are worked on the wrong side. The upside, and presumably the raison d'être, is that the plain rows are knitted back instead of purled, which is great if you're not a fan of purling. The downside is that it's a lot harder (for me, at least) to read your knitting on the wrong side, which makes it much harder to keep track of your place in the chart row. There was much frogging and intentional dropping of stitches to fix mistakes.