Monday, August 24, 2009

Dishrag rampage.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out how to knit a nice squarish-square. It seemed unlikely that knitting and measuring in garter stitch would yield a perfect square, even with my best intentions. It then occured to me that the basic "granny" dishcloth, since knit on the diagonal, would necessarily yield a perfect square. So on I cast!!
The idea: knit a dishcloth-sized square of 100% wool and then felt to get a coaster. To try and get even fancier, I'm going to attempt to weave acrylic or cotton yarn through the yarn overs. I'm hoping that the wool will felt around the non-feltable fibers and give me a coaster with teeny tiny holes around it. I have NO IDEA whether or not this will work or whether I will get a mottled yarny tangle mess.

Anyway, if my test coaster (in primary yellow and red) works, I think it would be cool to knit and felt a whole set with undyed yarn and then dye the set together with some unifying treatment or color. I've never been a huge fan of hand-dyed yarn colors pooling (this is when multicolored yarn produces 'pools' of color in the finished knit fabric) so why not dye them at the end and go for a dip-dyed effect?

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for the patience to do the felting (I feel like my real laundry should take precedence, right?) I've gone on a dishrag rampage. They're addictive!

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