I’ve told you before that I love making dishcloths. Especially to learn techniques. I finally decided that I was tired of not knowing how to change colors while knitting, so I just jumped in and tried it. I think it turned out really well for my first shot.

It wasn’t nearly as challenging as I thought it would be. One of those things that are much more intimidating than they should be.

The free pattern which I found through a Ravelry search, can be found here. It’s a really easy pattern to memorize and I love the end result.

If you remember, at the beginning of this year I made three goals for myself of things to work on in 2008. Although I haven’t been as successful with these goals as I had hoped, I certainly did better than I have done on past goals and it’s been fun to be able to look back at my goals to see how much I’ve accomplished through the years. So here’s a look back at how I did on my 2008 goals…

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I recently crocheted and knit up some cloths for a Christmas gift. I’m pretty sure the recipient doesn’t read my blog, so I thought I’d go ahead and post about them here.

The lady I’m giving these to loves her dogs, so I thought this paw print cloth would be a good choice. I think it turned out really cute! I used the pattern found here: Paw Print Cloth.

This pattern looks really nice with a variegated yarn.

This crochet cloth was just a simple half double crochet stitch, but I love how sturdy it feels.

My bff, Bridgette’s 24th birthday was this past week. I decided to get crafty with a couple of presents I gave her.

I saw this yarn when I was shopping for a few supplies for gifts and immediately thought of Bridgette. I bought the yarn with intentions of making a Calorimetry, but realized the yarn just wasn’t quite right for that pattern. The yarn was, however, perfect for a scarf. So I got started on a scarf with the soft yarn.

This was the final product. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. This was my first attempt with adding fringe to anything, and I really liked what that added to the scarf. I got the whole scarf out of one skein of yarn.

I’m not sure where I got this idea (although I’m sure I’ve seen it somewhere before) but I decided to “package” the scarf to look like a cupcake. With just a bit of quilt batting and some sewing pins, it got to looking pretty cute (although it didn’t photograph all that well).

Bridgette seemed to like it and wore it that night. Hopefully it will help keep her warm during this cold winter!

I went through a lapse of time in September and October when I wasn’t knitting. I’m not sure why, other than the fact that other, more urgent things kept coming up. By the time I got back around to picking up the knitting needles, I was seriously worried that I might have forgotten how to both knit and purl.

Thankfully, when I picked up the half-knit dishcloth I had been working on it all came back to me. I’m so grateful that sometimes my hands seem to remember more than my mind. The rest of the project came together quickly, one of those things that makes you wonder why you thought it would be such a big task.

I made a lot of dishcloths for last year’s Happy Homemade Christmas. They’re great for my short attention span and they allow me to try new techniques without committing to a large project. Plus I think they’re one of the more useful things I can make and give, even though I know not everyone uses knit dishcloths.

I was scrolling through knit dishcloths on Ravelry one day, before I had even learned how to knit. (Just because I didn’t know how didn’t keep me from admiring the works of those who did.) This free dishcloth/washcloth pattern caught my eye, because my father-in-law is a huge Star Trek fan. The pattern looked easy enough, a great way to try out images in knitting.

(I found this really hard to photograph, if you can’t tell. I did the best I could, but it looks better in real life.)

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I still need to work on getting a steady gauge with my knitting. But you can tell what it is and FIL liked it well enough to hang it with his collection, so I guess it accomplished it’s goal. I will be doing more dishcloths/washcloths like this in the future, I think they turn out so neat! In fact, I have one on the needles right now as a Christmas gift!