The One Where I Discuss Washcloths, At Length. Because My Life is Just That Exciting.

So, I mentioned the other day that I had signed up for the summer cotton yarn swap at Crochetville ... and I tantalized you with pictures of my washcloth in the Wild!

Lately I have been on a bit of a washcloth-making-kick. They are fun for several reasons: a) You can try out new stitch patterns on a small-scale b) they are very portable (even into the rugged terrain near the middle fork of the Payette River!); c) They make nice and soft, yet scrubby and absorbent washcloths for the kitchen (yes, I did just make up the adjective "scrubby"); d) they are great instant-gratification projects for me and my ADD; e) they are fun to put in spa-themed packages for use with skin care or bath stuff; and last, but certainly not least ... f) I found this BEAUTIFUL cotton yarn at Michael's the other day!!! (editors note: I had to include a picture of the yarn from the Lily website, cuz my camera sucks right now. But soon there will be beautiful pictures of this yarn in all sorts of wonderful crocheted creations!!)

Look at the gorgeous color of this yarn. It is Lily Sugar 'n Cream (in a big huge skein!! Not those little balls!) in "Robin Egg Blue" (and the yarn is a bit lighter than this in person ... this picture is more teal or turquoise, and the actual yarn is more aqua, IMHO, but ANYWAYS,). I am obsessed with this aqua-y, spa-blue-y, robin-egg-y color lately ... I have a new bedspread (sort-of seen here in the background of my crochet picture) very similar to this color ... and I just love it. So I had to buy the yarn when I saw it at Michael's, which means ... lots of washcloths! (I guess I could make something a little more "cool" with it but for now I am on this washcloth kick)

Anyways, that brings me to my story about this washcloth that I made:

Looks pretty simple, right? You would think. But no. I made it all sorts of complex. So, the stitch pattern I used makes one row that has a wavy edge, and then one row that makes the edge straight again. So, the foundation chain is straight, the edges are straight of course, but for some reason I ended with the wavy row, instead of doing the last straight row to finish . I finished that wavy row, cut my yarn, and began my single crochet edging. Not complicated at all. I had single crocheted the foundation chain and all the way up one edge and was about to round the corner when I realized that the top was all wavy. So ... straight sides, straight bottom edge ... and wavy top. Not good. So ... instead of unraveling my edging that I had done so far in order to back up and do that last row (cuz I am lazy!) I decided that I would just pause where I was ... I unraveled quite a bit of yarn from my ball and cut it. Then I had this little separate ball that was still attached to my in-progress edging, but my yarn was free to re-attach to my corner and add that one last row to make the edge straight. So, joined my yarn, added my last row, edge was straight, so I continued on with my edging. Rounded the corner, edged both remaining sides and made it back to the original corner. But I still had quite a bit of yarn in my little mini-ball that I had cut off. I decided that I had enough yarn left to make another round of single crochet (I am a daredevil like that! I live on the edge!), so I continued on around my washcloth a second time ... but of course I ran out of yarn in my little mini-ball of yarn about 5 stitches from the end of that round. So, I joined in yarn from my big ball (again) and finished those 5 stitches. So, to summarize: in a stupid little washcloth where I SHOULD have been able to finish with one yarn join ... I had three separate yarn joins. which means like 3 times as many yarn ends to weave in ... geez. But of course the saga of the pain-in-the-ass washcloth has a happy ending ... you can't even tell that I messed it up repeatedly. Looks cute. And here is another washcloth that I finished recently (There are more to show, but my camera died immediately after taking these):