Washcloths Revisited

The Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival gave some lovely door prizes, and did I ever score! There's this bundle of mercerized Egyptian Cotton from Classic Elite Yarns in swirls of blue that I have not yet begun to play with.

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Then there's this jumble of hand dyed colors in mercerized cotton, CRAYONS LITE from Rainbow Mills. Each skein contains approximately 962 yards, which meant nothing to me. I'd never worked with cotton before making those green washcloths, and I'd certainly never worked with yarn this fine before. I'd been a worsted weight gal with the blankets. The festival was back in February, and it took me until the last day of April and the first day of May to get over the intimidation and work with it.

First attempt was the washcloth pattern I have used before. It makes a pocket for left over slivers of soap that then can be tucked inside. The heavier cotton ones in green were a bit heavier than were handy to use, so this thinner yarn looked like just the thing. And since I had no idea of gauge or yards, I just dug in. What came out was a washcloth that was about two thirds finished when I ran out of yarn. This led to some stitch counting, re figuring, and pulling it all out to start over. Next attempt led to this.

Here is the second skein from the bag of that same color. When the cloth was finished, there were about two feet of yarn left over. The recalculations worked!

Then I decided to try just a flat cloth. I stole the idea from the scarf I made recently, which was to work it in the round, and when you run out of yarn, you're done. The first one was made the same way I would make the top of a swirly flat top hat. When I got to what looked like halfway through the yarn, I stopped.

The next one I *thought* was going to be the same pattern as the first, but it turned into a pinwheel pattern with the stitches. I want to figure out how I did that, so I can do it again.







And voila! They turned out, while not the same pattern, to be exactly the same size. Those two cloths are made from one skein. Another skein is shown for comparison.