Monday, January 19, 2015

Dishcloth Knitting Tutorial aka What in the world is "Mercerized Cotton" and what do I do with it.

Back last fall my friend sent me a message that read "I have huge bags of yarn and other crafty things.  Want them?"  To which I replied "DUH."I have a serious yarn habit.

I can home one day to THREE TRASH BAGS FULL of yarn and stuff on my front porch.  I literally squealed.  I went through and separated everything into piles and ended up with some stuff called "mercerized cotton".  It looks like embroidery floss, but thicker if that makes sense and was on all these little spools.  So, I got to googling.

According to WiseGeek.com :    Mercerized cotton is cotton which has been treated with sodium hydroxide to bring out certain properties first discovered by John Mercer in 1851.

Ok. So I know WHAT it is, but not what to do.   I threw it back in my plastic tub and flash forward to last week, I decide to do something with it.  I knew I didn't have enough to make clothing from, plus it is an odd feeling.  The slippery is weird.  I decided on dishcloths!

Again, off to google.  I saw TONS of tutorials for "Grandma's Favorite Dishcloth" and decided to go that route.  Most used normal yarn and since mine was so thin, I decided to double up on the threads.  Not really sure WHO to give credit to officially so I thank all knitting Grandma's out there for this one!

With the size of the yarn, I decided to use size 2 needles.  My needle length is 13.5inches. This was my determining factor in the size of the cloth.

Cast on 4
Knit across all four.
Next row Knit 2, yarn over, knit to the end.
Repeat the last row until you get the width you want.  


I ended up going until I had 80 stitches across.  When beginning to knit this you are making a big triangle.  By doing yarn overs you are adding additional width as well as the cute little holes on the sides. Yarn overs are literally just that.  Take the yarn from the back and loop it around the needle. After turning and going back across treat that as a stitch to knit.


Once at the width you want, time to start decreasing.
Knit 1, K2Tog, Yarn over, K2Tog, Knit across.
Repeat that until you are down to 4 stitches left on needle.
Bind off.
Weave in ends.

BOOM. Done.
 So, there you have it.  Super easy pattern to mindlessly knit, kill time, and bust your yarn stash!

Friday, January 9, 2015

Update on Nate for those interested.

As I mentioned last year, we have started weaning Nate off his meds. I really have no clue how my mom did this with me. It is so darn stressful.

The anti-seizure meds that he is on have to be slowly weaned off of. He was never on a super high dose to begin with, but this process is maddening. We have dropped his meds about 30% now (it took a month!) in morning and night. By the end of February we should be totally finished!

The super scary part is that he has a 50% chance of having another seizure within the next six months.  The likelihood of having another get less over time, but never fully goes away. Apparently, I could have one at any moment. 

I am trying to be a glass-half full kind of girl, but it is SO hard sometimes. 

I was just talking to Eric while I was making dinner how around this time three years ago, we were gearing up for a trip to Disney World. It was such a rough year with Nate having the seizures and V having her first throat surgery, it was an awesome time to unwind.

Who knows. Maybe I'll get picked to be a Disney Social Media Mom this year and I can get a trip back! A girl can dream, right? 

Kind of like the two ends of a book. Epilepsy was not a book I wanted opened and I will be SUPER happy to see it closed.