Handmade Dishcloths and a Tea Cosy

After making Tania's frugal scouring dishcloth I started looking at patterns for crochet and knitted dishcloths.

Finding free patterns on the internet was easy. The trouble started when I realized most are written to suit US and used worsted weight or kitchen cotton.

What is worsted weight?

I found a lot of conversions on this site -
http://www.crochetaustralia.com.au/webcontent3.htm

Worsted weight is equivalent to Australian 10 - 12 ply

Wouldn't that be too thick for a discloth?
Is 10 - 12 ply cotton available in an Australian brand?
I can only find 4 and 8 ply.

I like a thin dishcloth and I only had 4 ply on hand so I knitted up a basic version of granny's favorite.... too thin.... pulled it out and knitted two lots of 4 ply together and liked that result better.

I looked at the crochet patterns then decided to play around myself and settled on a square of half-trebles (US = half-double crochet).

Then I knitted up the Garterlac dishcloth which was a fun pattern to work with.

Here are the first 3 dishcloths......
The Garterlac one looks abit out of shape. I should have washed and blocked it before taking the photo. Too late now as I have already given these three dishclothes away to a friend :-)

I made these for myself.....

Versions of Granny's Favourite & King Charles Brocade

The King Charles Brocade probably would have looked better if I'd knitted it in a plain colour.... oh well, you live and learn :-)

All of the dishcloths above were made using 4mm needles (or hook) and 2 strands of 4 ply cotton.

I made the next two dishcloths for one of my sisters......

For pattern click here

Rose pattern click here

The rose didn't show up as much as I thought it would, so I knitted the next picture dishcloth on smaller needles and the picture stood out a little better. Sorry no photo as I was in a hurry to get a set of dishcloths ready for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day.

I haven't knitted or crocheted anything for years but it seems like now that I have started I just can't stop, which is probably a good thing as I might use up some of the yarn I have stashed away in the cupboards.

My latest creation is a tea cosy.....

Rosy Cosy pattern here

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Bev