A trio of face cloths!

I have a friend who is on a two-year work assignment to China. She's here visiting now, after being gone for quite a while and it just so happens that she recently had a birthday. To celebrate, several of us are taking her to dinner on Saturday. But what do you give to someone who has to schlep the gift all the way back to China? There MUST be a knitting solution! So I got out my Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns and started thinking. Then I got a bit crazy and decided it wasn't good enough to just do any old face cloth; what I needed to do was chart the Chinese symbol for friendship!

First step, find a symbol. A quick Google search and I came across this one that seemed like it would work. Then it was on to the knitPro web application to turn it into a chart. This is a great (and free) service that lets you load up any image and then creates a knitting chart for you. The sizes are limited, but you can start with the chart it makes and then customize it on your own, which is what I did. Very cool!

And here's the result. I'm not totally enamoured of it, but with handmade gifts, it's the thought that counts, right? As you can see, it's hard to tell where the symbol is. Maybe that's a factor of the white yarn not providing a lot of contrast. I think next time, maybe I'd try it as an intarsia pattern instead. Anyway, I made it using one strand of Lion Brand Cotton on a Decor Accents Fine Gauge AJAL, using 33 pegs. It came out approximately 7" wide and about 6.5" tall.

So then I decided that if one face cloth was good, more would be better! Since I tend to want to do things in groups of odd-numbered items, I made two more cloths using stitch patterns from the book. So, here are two more that I made. Both are done on a Decor Accents Small Gauge board, in this case, an Infinity Rake just 'cause that one didn't have any other project on it at the moment. Again, I used one strand of Lion Brand Cotton.

The first is a horseshoe lace pattern. I like how it came out, but need to figure out how to get the scalloped edge on the top as well as the bottom. This pattern is very simple to do on a board.




The final cloth is a pattern called Pyramids. It's very simple, just a variation of knit and purl stitches. I think it looks really nice and would be a good pattern for a baby blanket or a variety of other things.


I haven't written up patterns for how to do these yet, but I plan to do so. If you're interested, check back in a couple of days and they might be here!

Now, to package these up with the yummy bar of handmade Lavendar soap I bought. Hope she likes them!