Bitten by the Dishcloth Bug

After many years of tatting, I find the speed of knitting refreshing. When people see me tatting in public, they say things like, "You could make a lot of money making those," not realizing that at top speed, I could probably net about 17 cents a day. (We won't talk about people who say, "You could buy that at Wal-Mart for $1.50 and say yourself the trouble.")

Knitting a dishcloth is particularly fast and gratifying, never mind the price at Wal-Mart. And I am using up a couple more balls of crochet cotton from my stash into the bargain.

This cloth is made of blue and yellow crochet cotton and yellow linen. I started putting in concentric diamonds of stockinette because I like to play with patterns. First I learn a pattern, then I play around with it. And the diamonds keep me awake, of course!

My brother is a graduate of the University of Michigan, so I will probably give this cloth to him. (I graduated from Michigan State University, myself.)

I don't know whether it will block out square or not. Another one I made with linen and a cotton-linen blend, with a wide stockinette diamond, was very diamond-shaped as I was knitting it, but blocked almost perfectly square. So I'll have to finish the point before I find out.

It is still raining today. Great knitting weather, with a forecast high of the mid-40's. I do wish I had mowed the grass a second time. With the rain, it looks like it will be knee high in some spots before we get dry weather again next week. But I would rather have rain than drought.

And the chilly damp air gives me a good excuse to keep a little fire going in the soapstone stove, the size I call a "day fire". A day fire keeps the chill off and forces me to get up every so often to check and see if I need to add another stick of wood.

My husband makes "night fires". A night fire is a stove fully loaded with wood and damped down, so we get slow heat all night, and have a nice bed of coals in the morning to rake up.