one little thing

I got a lot done today - read several chapters of the probability book (the Monty Hall problem still breaks my brain. It's NOT a Schroedinger situation, it is not something behind that door that is midway between a goat and a car and it becomes one or the other when you open the door, but many phrasings of it make it feel that way, and it also seems bizarre to me that the probability apparently changes)

While I read, I knitted on a very simple thing:

A simple dishcloth. I found a skein of the simple cotton yarn (this goes by various names; I think "Sugar and Cream" is the most common brand, but there's also a Lily, and wal-mart's house brand is apparently "Peaches and Cream"). This was from my stash, I bought it at some point and tucked it away. (I probably have more, I just have to dig a little). And at any rate, I have more - my first ever order from Herrschnerr's came.

I think it must have been Mary Maxim that some people complained about, years ago, or maybe one of the other mail-order places (this was in the era before online shopping was so big). I had avoided Herrschnerr's because I was mistakenly remembering that complaint as saying their customer service was not good and their shipping was slow and that seems to have been wrong - the order I placed came in good time, even given that it was a "SmartPost" shipping (which gets handed off from UPS or someone to the postal service for "last mile" delivery, which usually slows stuff down by a day) and everything in the order was as it should be. So okay - there's another source for craft supplies for me now.

(Herrschnerr's is an old, old company, founded in 1899, doing mail order before most places did. Their website is fairly basic but not hard to navigate).

And again: I would like to see them continue. I suspect that as long as at least some people have money, craft supply sellers will be okay - ESPECIALLY with a lot of people choosing to stay home in this, we need stuff to do!

The pattern I used is an old, old one, most commonly called "Grandma's Favorite" or similar. I assume "favorite" because it's easy to knit - I was able to do it while reading about Catalan numbers and conditional probabilities - and it works pretty well as a dishcloth. (The nice thing about these is you can wash them on hot in the washing machine, and dry them on hot in the dryer, and they come out fine. The plain white ones you can even bleach or boil if you have to; they are cotton). The yarn for making these is cheap and pretty widely available - most any craft store has it, even stores like wal-mart that have a craft "section" that usually isn't very good tend to have it.

It's also something I would perhaps pick as a "first project" if I were teaching someone to knit - it's fast (I made this in an afternoon, though I am an experienced knitter), you learn garter stitch and yarn overs and decreases, and best of all, you aren't doing it interminably, which is the case with scarves, a common "beginner' project. And if it's imperfect, it's fine - as long as it doesn't unravel, it will still wash dishes. (You can also use them as facecloths/washcloths if you don't mind something a little bit rougher than standard). I've even seen these worked up giant size (a lot more stitches before you start decreasing) as baby blankets. (Again, cotton might be a good yarn for these - washable, not too hot, generally hypoallergenic)