Crochet Triangle Dishcloth {Free Pattern}

I've been meaning to post some of my crochet patterns for a while but life has been busy! :) Here's one for a triangle dishcloth in crochet. Why triangle, you may wonder? I made one on a whim once to use up a leftover ounce of cotton yarn from some other project, and discovered that a triangle dishcloth fits the shape of my hand perfectly and as such is AMAZING for wiping things down, such as the kitchen table! You know how usually you wind up kind of wrapping the dishcloth around the ends of your fingers and pinching to hold onto it? Well no more hanging onto your cloth with these triangles. As I said they just fit the shape of your hand and make a bowl of cherries out of scrubbing the kids' fingerprinty mashed potato or spaghetti sauce smears off the dining table, even after they've dried on. :)

This pattern takes approximately 1oz of worsted weight cotton yarn per dishcloth, is crochet in continuous round in single crochet, and works best if you have 2 subsequent sizes of hook like E & F or F & G or G & H. I think an F & G work best if your guage and tension are usually spot-on.

If you are using a 2oz ball of yarn such as Peaches & Creme or Creme de la Creme then you can get 2 dishcloths out of it- I would recommend starting a dishcloth at each end and crocheting 1-3 rounds on one cloth, then 1-3 rounds on the other, alternating until you run out of yarn in the middle, so that both cloths are the same size regardless of your personal hook choice or guage. A perfectly matched pair of dishcloths makes for a sweet gift.

This is an easy pattern and is written in a way that beginners will hopefully have little trouble understanding it. RND is round. SL ST is slip stitch. CH is chain. SC is single crochet. You may need to look up the magic ring if you're unsure what this means. Try YouTube for videos. Visuals make everything less confusing, IMPO!

Want to add it to your Ravelry que? http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mirages-easy-triangle-dishcloth

EASY TRIANGLE DISHCLOTH pattern by Jessica Mama Mirage (2010):

ROUND 1: With your smaller hook, do the magic ring (you can look it up on YouTube if you're unsure what this is) and crochet 6 sc into said ring, then cinch it up tight and as you continue on in the following round, crochet over your tail so you won't have to weave it in later. Do not slip stitch, do not chain up, do not turn: this pattern is worked in continuous round.
ROUND 2: Sc in first sc of round 1, (sc, chain 1, sc) in next sc, *sc in next, (sc, ch 1, sc) in next, repeat from * once more, that was round 2. Do not slip st, do not chain up, do not turn. You will continue to work in the round continuously without chaining up or turning for the duration of this pattern.
ROUNDS 3-17: Put a stitch marker or a scrap of contrasting yarn between your last st of rnd 2 and your first st of rnd 3. CHANGE HOOKS! From here on out you will use your larger hook. Sc in top of first sc of round 2. Sc in next also. (Sc, ch 1, sc) into the first chain-1 space of the previous round. * Work 1 sc into each of next 3 stitches. (Sc, ch 1, sc) into next ch 1 space. Repeat from * once more. Sc into last st of round. Move your stitch marker/yarn scrap up to the end of this round and continue on in this manner: work 1 sc into each sc, work (sc, ch 1, sc) into each chain 1 space, move your stitch marker/scrap up with each round. Do this until you have 16 rounds. Round 3 has 3 single crochets in between each (sc, ch 1, sc) corner as described above, round 4 has 5 sc between corners, round 5 has 7 sc between corners... and henceforth you add 2 sc per side per round. So on round 6 you have 9 sc per side, and on round 16 you should have 29 sc per side of your triangle, not including the (sc, ch 1, sc) in each corner. Your final round, round 17, should have 31 sc per side, not including the (sc, ch 1, sc) in each corner.
ENDING: As if you were beginning a round 18, **sc in each of next 3 stitches. Then slip stitch in each of next 3 stitches. Tie off, remove your marker, and hide your last yarn tail.
**NOTE: Depending on how you crochet and the size you'd like your finished product, you may stop on any round before round 17, or keep going for another round or several. Wherever you end, do it as if you were beginning the next round, as detailed above. **
If your finished dishcloth is warped or lumpy looking you can put a damp cloth over it and iron it flat through the damp cloth, then straighten the edges out and leave it to cool and dry someplace with good airflow.
For gifting purposes you may like to roll them like a crescent roll and tie with a scrap of yarn, then unravel the ends of the yarn scrap for a decorative look.

A couple more pics with triangle dishcloths in them:






Did you like this pattern? Want more? Let me know which one you want me to post next! I have written up dishcloth patterns for a ripple and a leaf shape, and have contemplated copying down a pattern for a Sunflower novelty dishcloth I came up with too. :)



~*Jessica*~

Dear friends and family,
It has been a while since I've blogged. Again. I'm so bad at keeping this up, aren't I? What have you all been up to?
My days are full of drool and diapers and endless questions. I wouldn't have it any other way! :) I absolutely adore being a mom. I would be thrilled to have 20 children and 400 grandchildren if such was possible!
My oldest, Chicklet, is in 1st grade and loving it! She's sweet and smart. In her spare time she loves making presents for her siblings and Daddy and I.
My son is finally 4. I say finally because... well... if you've ever had a 3 year old then you know. ;) They warn you about age 2 but trust me, 2 has nothing on 3. Then comes 4 and you finally start seeing fruit from the last 2 years of emotionally agonizing over this child every minute of every day! 4 is a wonderful age. Thank God for age 4! :)
Then comes Weetsie. Her nickname came from calling her "sweetie-weetie" as a baby and then "sweetsie" and finally just "weetsie" and somehow she's now 2 1/4 and Weetsie still sticks. I have been trying to remind myself to start calling her by her real name more often though because the poor child actually thinks her given name is Weet. Hehe... She's mischievous and opinionated and cuddly as can be! Tonight she had a toy alligator and I found this out when I was answering an email and suddenly there's a mouth full of plastic teeth about an inch from my right eyeball, and a tiny voice by my right elbow giggled, "LOOK Mama! Itsa crocodile!" Why yes, dear, I see. How can I not as it's about to poke out my eye with it's plastic chompers? Lol!
And speaking of chompers, dear sweet baby Honeypie is getting 4 at once! But as always she's in good humor and sweet as can be. She's the most relaxed and happy baby I've had. Making up for her siblings giving me fits in their infancy! I will say I've never had a baby sick so much though. None of my others got sick as nurselings.
Sweet Honeypie is loved by everyone and probably a bit spoiled. :) She'll be a year old in a few weeks. I can't believe time has flown so fast!
And it's almost Christmas. Wow! My favorite time of year! I've been crafting away like crazy! How about you?
And now it's time for Honeypie to go to bed and me and the world's most wonderful husband to watch a movie together while I do more of said crafting.
God bless you all with a wonderful December!
~Jessica

New Book Review: Love At Last Sight

Please click HERE to read my review of this book!

Thankfulness

A sweet friend gave me that poem framed for my kids' bedroom wall. I hung it over the rocker where I would read it and rock my sweet babies to sleep. I'm in a very thankful stage of life right now. I have 4 beautiful children, the youngest of whom is 3 months old and just pure joy all the time! I spend late nights rocking her and praising God for the wonderful family He's blessed me with. Some seasons in life make it hard to be content, thankful, hard to praise. Right now, though I have 4 kids 5 and under, 3 of whom are 3 and under, 2 of whom are one and under, I've never been so happy. Somehow this is a season of thankfulness and I'm thankful for that too!

Why I Haven't Been Blogging

I've pretty much almost dropped off the face of the blogging world for the last half a year and I have finally decided that I really want to start up again now that things have finally started to settle down. Meanwhile I'd like to write a little bit about what's been going on to catch the ol' blog up to speed.

Sometime last summer, maybe the beginning of July, we began attending a new church. We had been searching for a family integrated church and when we tried this one it was everything we'd been searching for and more. We hadn't had a real church home since summer of 2005. In the months since we started attending this church, they have been a tremendous blessing to our family. I know God brought us there just in time for what we would face the rest of the year!

August and September:

(PIC LEFT: Mom in December of 2010, the last time I saw her before she stopped letting us take pictures of her.) In September my Mom lost her 10 year battle with cancer and went Home to Jesus. I was blessed to be able to make the trip to the other end of the state to visit her in August one last time. She didn't want me to see her because she didn't want me to see her and remember her like that, and yes, it was horribly hard to see her that way, but I'm so very glad I got to just go and spend a little time with her one more time. I took my oldest daughter with me, who was almost 5 years old at the time. Chicklet did very well with it. Much better than I did. She told my mom, "Grammie I'm so sad that you have to go to heaven soon and I won't see you for a long time, but I'm so happy that you won't be ouchie any more!" She gave her lots of gentle hugs and kisses but she spent most of the visit happily painting nearby. After we returned home, Mom eventually slipped into a coma, and on September 4th she left this world.

(PIC RIGHT: 6 months preggo. No it's not twins. *sigh*) I'd been having problems with preterm labor since 12 weeks with this pregnancy. It was connected to the stress of losing Mom, as it happened every time I got a report that Mom had taken a turn for the worse, of which there were many. When she died, I had to force myself to ignore and not deal with any of the feelings of greif until the baby was safely born.

(PIC LEFT: Birthday girl!) September 7th my sweetie-Weetie turned 1 year old. I planned to write her birth story out on my blog in honor of it but being 3 days after my Mom died, I didn't really have the heart to do much. Actually we had planned a joint birthday party for the girls on the 10th and I considered postponing it but decided it might be just what I needed to get my mind off things and help me to avoid letting the greif send me into labor yet again. So on the 10th we went ahead with the birthday party.

(PIC RIGHT: Birthday girl too!) On the 17th my Chicklet turned 5 years old, and the next day we discovered she had a loose tooth. 2 days later another one started wiggling too, and she lost them both soon after. They were the first two teeth she got as a baby and she was an early teether so it makes sense she would loose those two first and early.
(PIC BELOW: 1 lost and 1 loose.)

While we were visiting Mom in August, she insisted on buying our curriculum as her last gift, so she ordered the curriculum we had chosen for Chicklet for us. When it came we were very excited. Chicklet flew easily through the first third of the MFW K curriculum in the following few months before we began a very long break for the holidays and new baby.

Also in the month of September I had to have my top right wisdom tooth pulled. It had a terrible cavity that was causing me alot of pain and I was not sorry to see it go only because I naturally never had a bottom right wisdom tooth so that top one came in tilted and was always sawing up the empty gums where the one that never existed should have been. If I'd had a bottom wisdom tooth on that side I would not have been enthused at the prospect of losing it's counterpart. So I had it pulled and it was a long and difficult extraction. I had nightmares afterward about the cracking sound as the dentist pulled it out. And then we got the flu and it made it's way slowly through the family. September was a rather difficult month...

Our new church brought us meals for a week after Mom died. I was so touched that they would do that... we were still so new there!

October and November:
October brought my Mom's birthday and the pain of knowing that it would come around likely many more times again before we would be joining her in Paradise. I thought about her celebrating in Heaven with her parents and sister that went on before her.
I dreamt of her alot.

In November we celebrated our first Thanksgiving alone. We almost always spend it with my husband's family, and last year we had just lost my Nana and knew Mom might not have another Thanksgiving herself, so we spent it with my family. This year with all the preterm labor I couldn't make the drive safely so we stayed home. The day before Thanksgiving the prodromal labor started. No, not Braxton Hicks (been having those for months), and no not full blown labor either (been there too a few dozen times during my Mom's slow passing). These were nonstop painful contractions that felt like the real thing only didn't actually make enough progress to be real. I would be contracting nearly nonstop for another month.

December:
In December the end of pregnancy crazies started. You moms will know what I'm talking about. That part where you're waking up every day wondering if today will be the day and then going to bed every night bawling because today was not the day. That part where it hurts so much to move or not move and you don't want to go anywhere because people keep asking how far overdue you are and reminding you how miserable you are. When your mind starts playing tricks on you and your grasp on sanity starts losing itself in a whirlpool of hormones. And in my insanity I did something very. very. very. stupid...

It was December 24th and my first possible due date had come and gone and there were some people at the gas station on the corner holding a sign that said free. They were also holding... puppies. Yes I did. Yes, I was not thinking clearly at all. They were just so cuuuute. And my "I need to be snuggling a baby right now" instinct was in overdrive.
(PIC BELOW: The furry little rascal in question.)

Around 2:30 in the morning on Christmas day, something changed with the prodromal labor. It was trying to actually go somewhere. I did NOT want a Christmas day baby so I tried everything I could think of to stall it out but it would not be stalled. It kid of backed off for a few hours, long enough to take alot of pictures of my babies enjoying their presents, long enough to make eat Christmas dinner.

(PIC ABOVE: The SuperBug opening presents.)

By that evening I knew I was in "real" labor but was confused as to why it was taking so long. I'll write up the whole story eventually but looooong story short, I was in labor for 3 days and delivered a healthy baby girl on my birthday, December 27th, at 8:54pm. It was my first home birth. She was born in a pool in my kitchen and came out of the water screaming and pink and hungry! We named her Hannah Joy and she was my second smallest at 8 pounds 6 ounces. She's beautiful and has big juicy cheeks that everyone comments on. :)

(PIC ABOVE: The morning after her birth.)

I'll have to come back and tell you about the beginning of this year and throw in some pics later (ETA PICS!) because right now I hear a certain tiny person making hungry sounds, and 3 other small people acting cranky and in need of being put to bed. ;)

~*Jessica*~