Crocheted Dish-Washing Pads

I have for a long time being an on-and-off knitter and crocheter, but the reality of living in the tropics means that, what one can knit and crochet to use on an regular basis, is pretty limited. There is a long (now abandoned) crocheting tradition in this country, but it has been mostly limited to home decorative items.

Once in a while, though, I have knitted and crocheted apparel too. The results are not always so good. These crocheted dish-washing pads though are a great idea to use short pieces of yarn leftover from other projects, or like in this case, to reuse a never-finished one.

I have been going through my pretty large yarn stash to find yarn for a project I have in mind, and I found a few of my unfinished projects. Some were abandoned because they were winter apparel that missed our last winter holiday, some were clothes for my daughter's "babies", one of which I finished and handed over to her (luckily my daughter's "babies" do not grow up). And some were disastrous experiments, like the above.

I was crocheting a vest for a friends' kid. I got what looked like a beautiful cotton yarn for it, but once I started (and almost finished) I noticed that it looked garish, the yarn did not translate well to this medium, perhaps it would have looked better in a knitted piece, but by then I just didn't want to go back to it. I knitted something else (I'll show you someday). And it was, thus, abandoned.

When I found it, and since I wasn't going to reuse the yarn (too much work), I wondered if I could somehow do something with it.

Using a dish-washing sponge as a template I marked rectangles on the vest with vanishing ink, making sure the lines followed the crocheted lines. Then I sewed a zigzag line on both sides of the line to prevent it from unraveling when I cut it.

Using leftover, homemade bias tape from other projects I finished the edges, sewing several lines on it to keep the crocheted edges from coming apart. I got quite a few of these from the baby-size vest.

Now I don't have to buy sponges for a while, and seeing as I have more mismatched cotton yarn leftovers, I will probably crochet a few of this when I run out of them. They sure look a lot happier than the cheap sponges we buy.

While I would not reuse an piece of clothing for washing the dishes (ugh!), this was a good solution for this. Free and earth-friendly, I like that. If you are a knitter or crocheter, then this can be used for all those unfinished projects and tests we always seem to accumulate.

Slowly getting rid of all these unfinished projects makes me feel slightly better about my starting projects that take me months (or decades!) to finish, like it wasn't a complete waste of time and money.

Now I just have to finish that half-finished scarf that's two years old before we go on vacation in the winter. Want to make any bets?

Aunt Clara