Immensely Pleased!

Perhaps because I read so many knitting blogs I find myself generally unwilling to write about my own projects. I mean, when there are people out there writing books about knitting and going on tour and running yarn shops and making people laugh, well, my little efforts seem too piddly to blog about. Except that I am delighted with my current finished object so here goes.

Currently on the needles I have a baby blanket (nearly half finished), a prayer shawl (so close to finished that there's really no excuse for it not being finished), the final sock for a very belated birthday gift (which, like all second socks, is not going as smoothly as the first) , and an experimental sweater for The Princess. Enough to keep anyone good and busy, for sure.

But what did I get carried away with this week? A dishcloth. A simple cotton dishcloth. The pattern comes from the wonderful Mason Dixon Knitting. I resisted buying the book for quite some time because, well, quite honestly, I already have a few knitting books and try to mostly stick to borrowing them from the library. More money for yarn, you know. But after reading about a few knitters' experiences with the MDK baby kimono, I decided I needed the book as I was looking for some simple baby sweaters to accompany the baby blanket, all of which are destined to be wrapped around my former student Yasmin's new daughter in the summer.

I meant to get started on that kimono and then got sidetracked by the ball band dishcloth which started to ring all my bells. Why? Maybe it's the clever slip stitch which looks more complicated than it really is (if you pay attention, anyway--if you don't it actually is complicated, trust me). But I think what I love are the repeating blocks of color--I've always loved repeated squares and dots and I think this works on me on the same way. I found some ridiculously garish yarn and am completely charmed by the result. More of these to come, for sure!