This week I have several small projects but all made with the same yarn: Kichen Cotton.

I’ve been wanting to make the one skein wonder shrug because I had read many great reviews of the simplicity and ingenuity of the pattern but can’t think of one woman I would knit for who would look good in it. This isn’t a slight against the pattern or the women in my life - just a simple recognition of a cut that is not meant for big bellied, big boobied curvy women or smaller but big-shouldered women. We have enough trouble finding clothes that fit us we really don’t need to be wearing something that looks like it shrunk in the wash.

This is something that is meant for the tiny girls. Again. Anyway, the only tiny girl I would knit for would be the niece. So I decided to, yet again, adapt a popular pattern to fit her.

It took a little work because I needed to give her a lot more ease in the sleeves for her chubby baby arms but I used the standard measurements of approx 8.25 across the back and 7.5 upper arm circumference. I used these same standard sizes for the baby bucket hat and it fit her perfectly.

I used the leftover Lion Kitchen Cotton yarn for the shrug that I had used for the hat so they should match perfectly. There are a few more photos in the flickr set.

But wait! There’s more!

I also made a few dishcloths and dish scrubbies to bring to Cody’s Great Aunt Mae when we visit her on the farm in Socorro. They’re such simple little knits, great way to practice a technique or pattern, a lot like sketches but with yarn. They’re also a nice simple gift and I’ve heard they do a great job scrubbing pots.

And, lemme tell you, using cotton yarn like this is CHEAP this stuff is like 1.99 - 3.99 and you can get 2-4 washcloths out of one skein. The only challenge is that this cotton is slightly rough and has almost no give. But after a little practice you get used to using non-stretchy yarn.

I also found a really cool pattern for round pot scrubbies (which I’m entirely too tired to go find again right now). They take an hour to make and are swirly.

So altogether I’m bringing two circular scrubbies, a scrubbing washcloth, and three larger dishcloths. All tied up with an icord. The other cloths are on flickr.

And last but not least

A few weeks ago, after the first fun with Kool Aid weekend I bought some white Lily sugar and cream cotton. Now acid dyes like Kool Aid doesn’t work on plant-based yarn like, say, cotton or bamboo. Nor does it work on the petroleum-based yarns.

But I found a great tutorial on craftster on how to dye plant yarns and used some tie dye kit dye on some skeins of the white cotton yarn yesterday. I’ve set up a little studio on the back porch because the one yarn dyeing experiment I tried in the kitchen just didn’t work out. I was too worried I was going to make a mess to really create anything good. But I had an old stained desk leftover from the office makeover and just set it up outside.

So yesterday I did some fabric dyeing on the cotton skeins (which I had to unball and roll into skeins - good news! The goko swift is good for that too!). The colors were a little simple - I was working with a very simple palette of red, blue, and yellow (I particularly dislike the fluorescent yellow) so I vareigated it as much as I could. After rinsing it the colors were still a little simple - and some had blurred together into an unappetizing orangish brown. So this morning I sprayed Clorax Cleanup on parts and let that sit for a while before rinsing. Now that did some cool stuff. The yellow is still a bit too day-glo for my taste but what the hell I’m learning and they’ll make interesting dishcloths anyway.