Washcloth Wednesday

Like all crafters, I have boxes filled with leftovers; scraps of fabric or yarn. Lots of them. And like a lot of people, I don’t really like to add to the huge amounts of waste. So all those disposable towels, wipes and washcloths are not making me too happy.

Why not combine these two, and start making my own washcloths with leftovers. Making them is a great way of learning and trying new stitches, they don’t need too much yarn and the leftovers are going to be used well. And, the cloths will be reusable!

So here is the idea; every week, I’m going to make a new washcloth. Or a dishcloth. Or a you-name- it-cloth….
Each week a different stitch. Sometimes knitted, sometimes crocheted. Sometimes very easy, sometimes (a bit more) complicated. And every week I’ll show and tell on Wednesday. So from now on, Wednesday will be Washcloth Wednesday!

 

This week I start with a stitch I found years ago in an old book, and I wrote it down, but didn’t mention a name and by coincidence, last week Drops had an instruction video on Facebook for this stitch (they call it basket weave). It gives a nice ‘woven’ look to the cloth.

For these stitches you need an odd number of stitches on your needle:

Row1: * insert in back loop of 2nd stitch on the left-hand needle, knit this stitch but keep the stitch on your needle, knit the 1st stitch on the left-hand needle and let both stitches fall of the left-hand needle *, repeat this until end, knit the last stitch.

Row2: * purl the 2nd stitch on your left-hand needle (don’t let fall off!), purl 1st stitch, and let them both slide of together *, repeat until end, purl the last stitch.

This is how the back will look.

Of course you can add borders. This time I started with a few rows in garter-stitch, and all rows of the pattern were started and ended with 3 stitches in garter-stitch. Because of this, I had to increase in the last row of the bottom-border 1 stitch every 9 (and decrease this in the first row of the top-border), and I’ve made 3 short rows on both sides.

Groetjes, Dorien