On a suggestion from a work colleague, I started experimenting with cotton, after complaining about how I don't knit in warmer weather because it makes my hands all sweaty. I hadn't seen many patterns involving cotton before, but I came across one for a facewasher that looked really pretty. I wanted to make a set of 3 for a friend for her birthday. Here are some pics:
However, there is just one fatal flaw in the pattern - they are a PAIN IN THE ARSE to make! Each of the 5 petals is made separately using garter stitch, then they are attached together into a ring, and you use 5 double-pointed needles to reduce, reduce, reduce, until the hole in the middle is closed up. There are 3 main problems with this:
1) It results in a huge number of loose ends to weave in, which have to be done neatly because there is no 'wrong side' to the facewasher.
2) Working with double-pointed needles is bad enough, but FIVE of the damn bastards??!!
3) The method of increasing used to shape the petals seems very strange to me - it's one of the methods used when you want to make a decorative hole in the work. I reverted to the good old 'knit-into-front-and-back' method.
To make things worse, the author uses a special method of starting and ending each row, supposedly to keep the edges neat, but I found it made them look even worse, and was logistically almost impossible to do. I found the way the pattern was written was very wordy and confusing. Is this supposed to be for beginners? Phah!
Needless to say, my friend did not receive any home-made facewashers for her birthday. (It was last August.) So, it seems, the facewashers are destined to sit, not-quite-finished, in their little plastic bag for the rest of their days. I can't see me hating myself enough in the near future to pick up them needles again. The lady in the picture can press her own soft, springy chenille-cotton facewasher to her smug face all she likes. I'm moving on!!
On a more positive note, if not more interesting, I'm renovating my Works In Progress and Finished Projects pages in the next few days. (See the links to the left.) [this information is now defunct]
