I’ve been playing around with colour and some patterns, resulting in a very colourful woolen potholder and a cotton dishcloth.

Dishcloth

The dishcloth was made using Petals to Picots’ Three Colour Simple Stitch Crochet Dishcloth Pattern. The cotton yarn I had was very thin so, for the body of the dishcloth I doubled-up the orange, mint and beige with white yarn, and for the border I doubled-up the mint (using the two ends from the same ball of yarn). Keeping four balls of yarns from getting in to a big tangle was an effort, but I took time, as I turned the piece at the end of each row, to rearrange where each ball sat around me to avoid ending up in knots.

I found the border a little tricky to figure out where I should be making my stitches. The border on the first chain row (at the bottom of the photograph) has ended up with gaps on it (because it’s where the pattern begins) so I’ll have to think about ways to improve the border if I try it again.

Overall for the piece, I probably should have used a slightly smaller hook to make a tighter stitch but I like the quirky colourfulness.

Potholder

The potholder instructions came from a crochet book called “Patalappuja á la Carte” (note: the book is written in Finnish) by Jaana Vehkasalo, and there are examples of potholders from the book’s patterns at Ravelry. The pattern I chose is the grey one hanging second from the right on the front cover, but inspiration hit me and I decided to make it colourful.

When I began, I looked at the photographs of the potholder and counted the number of “waves” to find there were 8, so I kept that in mind as I crocheted along and chose my colours. What I hadn’t paid attention to was that the top of the piece ended on a “down wave” (not the raised one like each of my colour sections ended on). Oops! While all the other coloured sections were made from two rows of crochet, I decided just to continue the third and final row in red. Unless you stare and contemplate it intently, you won’t even realise that the red on one end is a little taller than on the other (at least that’s what I hope!).

This was the most colourful crochet piece I’ve made so far and in hindsight I should have attempted to weave in some of the yarn ends as I went by crocheting them in to the rows. Sewing them in didn’t take too long but it’s something I’ll keep in mind next time I get an urge for lots of colour.