Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I am very excited to be a beginning blogger and am very proud of my developing website. What brought me to this place in time? I learned to knit as a child but didn’t really keep it up. In university, I bought a knitting book, intending to pick up knitting again. I never did. When my second child was about 2 years old, her day care provider gave her a beautiful hand knitted hat and mitten set. It was such a special gift and I understood the time and care that went into creating it. I knew that I could do that too if I just sat down and took the time to get back to knitting. And so I did. Knitting was making a come-back at the time so that helped me along as well. I began collecting knitting books, magazines, needles, and yarn. I have continued to knit ever since, always challenging myself to learn new techniques and to try increasingly more challenging patterns. I am passionate about learning and knitting was no exception. It didn’t make sense to knit if I wasn’t always learning something new and getting better all the time!

During the summer of 2009 I began knitting dishcloths. Someone gave me a mega-size skein of cotton yarn that they didn’t want anymore and dishcloths were the only thing I could think of at the time to try knitting with cotton. Believe it or not, I really don’t like using knitted dishcloths in my kitchen! But I love knitting them. They are quick. They provide an opportunity to try different stitch patterns. They provide instant knitting gratification. The problem was, though, that I didn’t like any of the dishcloth patterns that I was finding. So I made up my own. And so Copycat Dishcloth and Boxy Dishcloth were born. I can’t even remember now which came first!

              

It was critical to me that I be able to design a dishcloth that didn’t require a border. Those dishcloths seemed so ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘home-made’ to me. So began my continued use of the slipped stitch at the beginning of each row and a purl stitch at the end. I love that my dishcloth patterns are clean, simple, straight, and they lay flat without a border! (I may have some obsessive tendencies). Every time I design a dishcloth now, my challenge is to make it straight and flat without that border. (I’m working on one now that is getting the better of me. I might have to give in and add one additional knit stitch to the beginning and end of each row. Sigh.) It is also critical to me that each dishcloth I design use up as much of an 80 yard skein of Bernat Handicrafter cotton as possible, never mind the fact that most people knit my dishcloths with other cotton yarns that contain more yarn per skein. Still, I strive to get the length and width just right so as not to have much left-over yarn. (Okay, I do have obsessive tendencies!)

I posted my dishcloth patterns for free on Ravelry. I didn’t believe they were sophisticated enough to charge for. And they have been constantly downloaded ever since. Thank you! This experience caused me to start thinking about writing knitting patterns that I could sell. And so I started working on some ideas.

Last month I posted my first pattern for sale. And it has been selling! And so here I am. Can I continue writing good patterns? Can I make money doing this? How can I promote my work? And so this blog was born.

Please keep coming back as I continue my knitting journey and blog about it here!

Thanks for reading,

Michelle