Monday, November 07, 2011

The Surprise Wash Cloth

I ordered yarn form Elann.com at one point. One of the yarn was a skein of 100% linen called Linus.



Last spring I needed a quick take-along project to work on while waiting for the kids while they had their activities. I grabbed this skein of Linus and started a crochet washcloth where I did every row with a single crochet (sc) through the back loop of the previous row. The idea was to get a washcloth with a texture. Then I did 'crab stitch' around. Crab stitch is basically backwards 'single crochet' worked from left to right, while crochet normally goes from right to left. This is an excellent edging stitch for crocheted objects.

I made the washcloth last May, but for some reason I never actually did the finishing until couple of weeks ago (October 23rd according to Ravelry). This is what it looked like when I was done:




I used it the next day in the shower and something strange happened. The washcloth grew longways! It did not retain any of the structure but just stretched out and became flat! Completely flat! It was a joy to use though and felt great on the skin.





It's been washed now and it even more soft than before (the yarn is barely spun and therefore soft for a linen yarn even as I crochet it up) and it regained a little bit of it's structure but not a lot.

I was excited though. This was a great washcloth material. It felt great and would make a great gift, but I wanted to try different stitch patterns or different gauges etc. My mind was all fired up. Then I tried to find it on Elann's website. No luck :( Turns out the yarn is DISCONTINUED. AAAAARRRRRGGGG!!!!!!!

Of course.

Back to the drawing board.


p.s. if you know of any yarn that I could use instead (and no not Euroflax), please let me know!