Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Allergic to Wool?

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This post is dedicated to our Needlecraft Editor Heather. Heather wrote me that her friend Maggie in Michigan has tried to turn Heather into a knitter. However, Heather is allergic to wool. The only yarn Heather was familiar with was wool.

 

Enter [tag]Amy Singer[/tag], Editor/Publisher of [tag]Knitty[/tag] the online knitting magazine with tons of free patterns and fantastic articles. Amy is also allergic to wool. Amy wrote a wonderful book full of information about non-wool fibers and patterns to use them with.

In her book, “[tag]No Sheep for You[/tag]”, Amy not only talks about all the different fibers available to use for your project, how they are grown and processed, but she also explains how to substitute non-wool for wool in patterns. It’s possible, but you must choose wisely. If you want to knit a sweater and you substitute a gorgeous ribbon yarn for a pattern suggesting a toothy – almost scratchy wool, even though the gauge is the same, the sweater won’t work up with the drape and body that you are looking for.

Now, for a beginning knitter, a sweater, or hat, or scarf may be too much to start with, especially if you use cotton yarn which is not as elastic as wool and harder on the hands. I would suggest something that works up fast, but has some design to it. Something cute and fun and something we all need.

A dishcloth!

[tag]Dishcloth patterns[/tag] involve just knit and purl stitches for the most part. The purl stitch on the knit side creates the design. If you have trouble following the written word, I suggest getting graph paper and making a chart like you would have for any other type of needlecraft. Simple, fun, easy and cotton yarn is available in many colors!

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Comments

  1. THE knitting blog? Well, thankx. I wasn’t going to mention how fast you get bored 🙂 but I thought a dishcloth would be small enough.

    Hmmm cat toys? I’ll look around . . .

Have you read?

Embellish Your Knit Dishcloth with Flowers

One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift. 

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style. 

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills. 

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather. 

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do. 

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall. 

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills. 

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths