Practical Knitting

By the time I went to bed last Thursday night, it was pretty clear that I was not going to have enough yarn to finish my EZ's Green(Red) cardigan. I wasn't short by much, but I was going to be short. What to do? Would there be enough if I shortened both of the sleeves a bit? Should I make the neckline band narrower? I didn't want to panic or make any decisions until I could make a call on Friday morning to see if there might be another skein available with the same dye lot. Besides, I couldn't break my rule: Never rip out any knitting or try to fix mistakes after 10pm. Never.

A quick phone call on Friday confirmed my pessimistic hunch that I was S.O.L. on getting another skein of the exact same yarn. I did order another one though and set the whole works aside for the weekend with my fingers crossed that when the yarn arrived it would be close enough in color to allow me to finish the sweater without too much trouble.

That left me facing a whole weekend without any knitting! I had to find something fast. There were hockey and basketball tournaments all weekend that the guys wanted to watch, so I needed something to keep me busy enough to pretend that I was totally interested. (Actually, I only have to feign interest in college hoops. The hockey part I like.) Then I thought of my bag-'o-cotton-yarn that I kept around for kitchen dishcloths. It had been years since I had dug that old thing out. Perfect.

Some people stick their noses up at wasting precious knitting time making dish rags. What a sad lot. They don't know the thrill of casting on a project and finishing it a couple hours later. They don't know the satisfaction of using every inch of a skein of cheap yarn while creating lovely striped squares to drape across the kitchen sink for everyone to see. They don't know the joy of practical knitting.

Whenever I happen to see cotton yarns on sale, I throw a couple of skeins in the cart to keep on hand for these old reliables. I've been making them ever since I was a kid. I'm sure I've made dozens over the years. I'm also sure that my Mom and my Grandmas probably got sick of getting them, but they never said so.

When I dug through my cotton stash to decide which color to start with, I noticed that I had thrown a new pattern in my bag. It was for the Morning Glory Washcloths. How can you go wrong with a name like that? Like most dishcloth patterns, it's a quick study, and in no time, I was mindlessly knitting away. By Sunday night, I had four done.

Today my new skein of Ultra Alpaca showed up so I can continue on my sweater. The color is so close that I don't think it's going to show any difference at all. See, it pays not to panic--and to always buy an extra skein of yarn! Oh yea, and cheap cotton yarn for dishcloths.