Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Free Dishcloth Patterns

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You all seem to like the dishcloth patterns we dig up, and of course, if they’re free, that’s all the better, so I went a-searchin’.

Probably the largest repository I found was here:

http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory/dishcloths.php

They’ve got everything you can imagine, except the Red Wings. Hmmm, someone will have to design a Red Wings dish cloth, but don’t look here, no time for that.

I have a sweater that’s almost done (would have been a lot more done, if my 2 year old gd hadn’t gotten hold of it!) A scarf in the works and a hooded scarf/vest thing going. Oh and a pair of socks. Yeah, and don’t forget the vest that I had to start because I was in a mood that day and it was labeled experienced! (I’ll show them!) And that’s just what can be seen at a moments notice, I’m sure there are lots more.

So anyway, back to dishcloths, there is a wonderful Yahoo group called dishcloth of the week where they work on different techniques while making their cloths.

Here’s another website with  more dishcloths that anyone could ever knit:

http://pictureandpattern.blogspot.com/

You know what else I’ve found that has nothing to do with dishcloths? Facebook! What a fun little time waster that is! Look me up, if you mention craftgossip, I’ll be sure to friend you!

Comments

  1. OK, there are lots of dishcloths but all of them are knitted, what about crochet ones? My knitting leaves something to be desired, I have knitted dishcloths cause that is something I can knit and actually use!

  2. The lady that is having trouble knitting, I learned from a neighbour. She saw instantly why my mother could not teach me. It was the needles. As soon as she gave me circular needles, I was hooked. Maybe that is the same thing that is troubling you. A tip to remove the curls in the cord, turn hot water tap on and run the cord from needle to needle. If this doesn’t work boil water and in a large saucepan place the needles for a short while.

  3. I am looking for a pattern for an Orca Whale .dishcloth Pattern does any one know where I can get one

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]