What I Did on My Vacation (from the Internet)

Since I had no internet access for most of Thursday, I worked on finishing the "knitted loofah" facecloth, and knitted a couple more rows on another, um, cloth of some kind.

And I worked out the tatting pattern for J's heart from the bookmark. (Since I don't know whose pattern she used, I have blotted out my instructions in the photo. I don't want to violate anyone's copyright.) It's not half as pretty in ecru as in the shaded red and pink thread J used! But I was emptying out bobbins. An M&M's tube (regular size) hold 12 of the bobbins that fit in my Boye metal tatting shuttle.

When Wal-Mart stopped carrying tatting shuttles and bobbins, they put the bobbins on clearance. (This was several years ago, so no use looking these days.) I bought a package here, a package there, and when they got down to 75 cents, I bought all they had left. I never switch shuttles, I just switch bobbins.

The last time I went to put a full bobbin in my M&M's tube, it was already full! I decided I better use up some of that thread by tatting some of it up. (Either that, or I better try to find another "jumbo" tube, or whatever they called the longer size.)

A few words about the "other cloth". I'm not sure what this one is going to be: *spa washcloth, maybe? I wanted to try the moss stitch border from the mystery dishcloth my husband rescued from the armory. I got out a vintage ball of Clark's O.N.T. Bedspread Cotton (still in the ball band) and cast on 75 stitches onto the size 1 needles I recently lucked into at Goodwill. These are 2.5 mm size 1's, not 2.25 mm. I'm knitting moss stitch borders and a plain garter stitch center. The borders come out a little longer than the center, so every so often when the center starts to look short, I knit two short rows across the center only, to catch it back up in length.

It's boring, steady knitting in the middle. It shows up any deficiencies in my technique! I think of it as "good practice". I am getting exactly 60 stitches to the six inches in the center on these needles.

* Last summer I got a catalog that sold individual "spa experience" washcloths for eleven dollars each.