Dishtowel Ditty

Do you ever purposefully prolong a project because you love knitting it?

I do.

I am enjoying the hand-painted shawl/wrap I wrote about last so much that I am finding ways to knit sparingly on it so that the project will last longer. It seems like a silly idea, but I find myself only knitting on it when I can pay attention and fully enjoy the project. If I can’t, then I pick up something else to work on. This has led to very chaotic knitting over the past week or two. I work a little here, a little there, and nothing gets finished.

I’m ok with that. In fact, it’s feeling pretty good. Normally, this makes me feel frazzled and anxious, but right this instant, it feels like I am comfortably busy and that I am an accomplished knitter who can juggle all these various projects with ease and smoothly move among them. I hope that proves to be true, or else I will have a lot of messes on my hands.

So besides my great wrap, I have a pair of complicated toe up bayerische socks, my two log cabin blankets (1) (2), Michelle’s sweater (which I am kind of secretly avoiding) , and a pair of knucks. I feel rich with options!

I didn’t need to start something new to keep my occupied, but in a moment of feeling down, I decided to stop by Michael’s and grab a final ball of grey wool for the log cabin and indulged in a little retail therapy. I proceeded to purchase several balls of cotton and cotton-ease yarn and a few things to make stitch markers. The great thing was that I only spent $35 on all of it and it made me feel even richer.

As I said, I have been really enjoying the wrap and part of that is that is the cotton in the yarn. I love the cool feeling, the non-hairy yarn, the smoothness. So I thought it might be nice to work on some other cool cotton projects too. Hence the spree.

I got home and immediately cast on a dishtowel pattern in summery lemon and lime. It was very satisfying and has inspired me to try all sorts of combinations and colors. The entire time I am knitting it I am envisioning other versions. I am also thinking ahead that these could be great gifts, as in Christmas gifts for the family. I might end up giving this color combo to my sister as a house warming gift when they move to San Francisco next month. And I have another couple planned as surprises for Keith to go in our kitchen. So many dishtowel varieties to consider!

While sometimes it is great to knit lovely, gorgeous knitted items and get admiring looks and compliments on them, it can be equally rewarding to knit useful, un-glamorous work-horse knits. And where it used to be hard to part with, or even use these kind of items, it has grown easy and exciting to think of my entire extended family scrubbing their dirty dishes or wiping their greasy hands on my knitted goods.