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Monday, September 13, 2010

The Power of a Simple Dishcloth

A few weeks ago, Sharon, our general manager, lost her beloved mother, Brita. During the service, we heard how Brita shared her love for her friends and family by gifting them with hand knitted dishcloths. Sharon remembers seeing her Mom always busy - cooking, cleaning, baking wonderful cookies and, of course, knitting dishcloths. As a lovely gift for those at the service, there was a basket of Brita's cloths for us to choose from as we left. I chose the one below and already consider it a treasure.


My son is living batchelor style with a roommate and seems to have nothing more than torn towels to use as dishcloths in his dishwasher-less kitchen. So, I thought of Brita - always knitting. I took out her precious dishcloth, counted the stitches and began to knit. In no time at all I had one done and another one underway as you can see.


I'm working on more, too, and I hope that at the end of my life, a bit of knitted love will have impacted the lives of my children, too.  You see, we have Sharon running our company in great part, because of Brita. In their lives it was a simple formula:

Mother Knitting + Daughter Watching = Daughter Making Pacific Fabrics a Wonderful Place to Shop and Work For All Of Us!

Couldn't have been a better outcome. Thank you, Brita, for what you did and what you passed on!


Above are my next yarn choices for my son's dishcloths. You'll find a pattern for Brita's cloth and a close up of my current work-in-progress below. Go ahead! Knit some love and impact a life. It's a great way to give to the future and leave a bit of yourself behind!


Brita's Dishcloth

Materials:
1 skein of Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn
Size 7 knitting needles (straight or circular will work)

Pattern:
Cast on 38 stitches.
Rows 1 - 10: Knit in garter stitch.
Rows 11 - 14: Knit 4, (purl 2, knit 2). Repeat ( ) until the last 4 stitches, knit 4.
Rows 15 - 18: Purl 4 (knit 2, purl 2). Repeat ( ) until the last 4 stitches, purl 4.
Continue alternating Rows 11 - 14 with Rows 15 - 18 until you have knit 46 rows total from the beginning
Rows 47 - 56: Knit in garter stitch.

Add more stitches and/or rows for more length or vary your pattern a bit - I bet Brita did that, too!

~ Annette

2 comments:

Sue Dynneson-Bynum said...

Annette -

I was hooked on dishcloths made from Lily's Sugar & Cream until I happened to knit a dishcloth from 2 different colors of crochet thread! (I used white and a colorful mixture of brights.)

These dry faster, there no soppy mess (less smell-factor, too) and the bit of a "scrubby" texture helps in clean-up.

Instead of making them square I made a rectangle and found it easy to wipe up with / it hangs over drainboard and not quite so much surface area. There's a sample at the Bellevue store - right by the crochet thread. Try it...you'll be "hooked" too.

Sue / Bellevue 03

Annette said...

Sue - that is so cool! Thanks for the tip - I'll have to try that. I delivered three more to my son last night and he seemed pretty pleased with them. Sadly the two in the picture above got lost in the mail between Seattle and Stanwood and have yet to arrive. :(
~ Annette