Many of you will know that I have been truly inspired by Lynne Rowe’s ‘Use it or Lose it’ campaign.  If you haven’t heard about Lynne’s campaign-you can read all about it here.

I have been tidying my cupboards and recycling anything I know I will not use – local community projects, charity shops and my friends at knitgroup have benefited from my tidying.  It is also very ‘cleansing’ – I feel so refreshed and have space to see things in my yarn cupboards (yes, I have to admit my yarn cupboards were embarassingly full and I couldn’t find anything before!).  But I do have a problem – I LOVE YARN!  So I still have plenty of yarn and do need to use it.

I have started some large stash-busting projects; my Wrapped in Memories CAL was the first blanket but also I found 11 skeins of single-spun double knit merino in my tidy up, so I am doing another blanket.  It is a simple granny style blanket, with just a little interest in it occasionally so that I don’t get bored.   The yarn is superb to work with as it glides off the hook smoothly and that speeds up the crocheting, so it won’t be long before I have a photo to share 🙂

I am doing lots of other smaller projects as well.  On Sunday I grabbed a few balls of cotton DK and whistled off some simple dishcloths whilst binge-watching Requiem on the TV!  This is the result:

I just improvised the patterns – two of them were 8 round granny squares with simple edging:

They were each about 20 to 25cm square and used around 25g of dk cotton.   When making dishcloths I recommend cotton or linen yarn, both of which wear well and are good for the environment.  I pop my cloths in the wash after a day and, unlike microfibre cloths, washing them releases only organic fibres into the system.

I didn’t waste the ends of the balls either – I made a few cosmetic pads which you can see on the first photo above.   I have a free pattern for these here.  I have been using these pads for about 8 years now, making a few more every so often and recycling the oldest.   I used to use a packet of cosmetic cotton wool pads every month – so that’s a lot of cotton wool and plastic wrapping that I’ve saved!

The dishcloths ended up as little gifts for some of my cousins, but I am running a bit short of them in my kitchen so I plan to make some more for myself (yes, I still have plenty of cotton left!).   I’ll share photos of what I make with you, and the odd pattern for them as well.

Do you make dishcloths?   If so please share your ideas and makes – I’d love to see them.

Happy crocheting xxxx