My fellow blogger and fellow knitter Laura is hosting this week’s Holidays by Hand, featuring knitting. Click on over to One of Three to see what fun holiday projects she’s collected from around the blogosphere. My holiday knitting projects are below:

I posted a couple of weeks ago about my commitment to knitting through some of the yarn in my stash to make holiday gifts. To date, I’ve made three scarves (see the first one here) and now I’m moving on to knitted cotton washcloths.

About 10 years ago, in the throes of infertility and a house remodel (yes, we’re still married) I knitted many, many washcloths and gave them as gifts, wrapped around nice scented soap. While I was going through my yarn stash this fall, I found some small skeins of cotton, so I decided to make some more this year.

The pattern couldn’t be easier (see below) and you can buy very inexpensive Lion Brand cotton yarn in some interesting colors, if you don’t have any in your stash. The yarn I used is a Rowan DK cotton left over from a baby blanket I made a few years ago. You’ll see that I ran out of the lavender and had to finish up with green. There’s a formula somewhere for figuring out how much yarn a pattern will use up, but I didn’t take that all-important first step . . . I’ll probably take this washcloth apart and make it a bit smaller so I won’t run out of yarn.

Here are the photos: the washcloth laid out flat, and the washcloth with the soap wrapped up inside – (it’s a disk, not a rectangular bar).

The pattern is as follows:

• Cast on 4 stitches; ROW 1: Knit
• ROW 2: Knit 2, yarn over, knit to end of row (5 stitches).
• Repeat ROW 2 (increase one stitch at the beginning of every row) until you have a triangle that is half the size of a square washcloth. An adult washcloth is about 15″ wide across the diagonal, and the number of stitches you get to will depend on your gauge.

Second Half of Washcloth

• ROW 1: Knit 1, knit 2 together, yarnover, knit 2 together, work to end of row.
• Repeat Row 1 until you decrease to 7 stitches.
• Finish, ROW 1: Knit 2, slip 1, knit 2 together, pass slipped stitch over, Knit 2
• Finish, ROW 2: Knit 2, yarnover, knit 2 together, knit 1. Bind off remaining 5 stitches.

I made these two scarves below by using a shimmery novelty yarn mixed with a solid color yarn. I used #13 needles and cast on only 14 stitches, so the knitting went fast. Measuring and attaching the fringe, then trimming it to a length I liked was tedious, but I’m happy with the result. I plan to do fringe on the red scarf (it’s folded up in the photo) too; it’s a gift for Vintage Girl’s teacher, who wears something red almost every day.

It’s so satisfying to create these gifts with materials I have on hand; I’m feeling green *and* frugal!

Posted on November 24th, 2008 under Holidays by Hand, Uncategorized • Tags: frugal holidays, green holidays, knitting. • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback