Hand Towels

I have been procrastinating all week and so therefore have gotten lots of mindless knitting done! These are hand towels from the pattern in Mason-Dixon Knitting Knitting Outside The Lines. I'm a sucker for any pretty colorway in Peaches and Cream or Sugar and Cream cotton worsted yarns. Seems like I pick them up everywhere but in my defense I DO use it up exponentially faster than the rest of my stash. One ball of yarn will knit the colored part of these towels or 2 dishrags. I have a big cone of white and used that to finish the tops. Deedee provided the perfectly coordinating and very much machine washable plastic buttons.


Like I said, I use this stuff up fairly quickly knitting dishrags/potholders. My basic pattern is as follows:

row 1: CO 2 st
row 2: k1, YO, k1
row 3: k 2, YO, k1
row 4: k2, YO, k to end of row
Continue until you have 45 st. Begin decreasing as follows:
row 1: k2, YO, K2tog, k to last 4 st, k2tog, k2
Repeat until you have 7 stitches.
row 1: k2, YO, k2tog twice, k1
row 2: k2, YO, k2tog twice
row 3: k2, k2tog, k1
row 4: k2, k2tog
row 5: k1, k2tog
row 6: k2tog, cut yarn and pull tail through loop
One ball of this yarn will make 2 washrags/potholders.

I make a lot of these and have saved (of course) the scraps of all the dishrags I knit. From this biggest ball of twine I knit this mismatched hand towel for my kitchen.

Phun With Phyllo

I've had this pastry dough in my freezer for almost a year and was finally inspired to get it out and experiment with it. I brushed and layered 4 sheets together with melted butter and then cut the sheets lengthwise down the middle. Then I put 1/3 cup of chopped apple-brown sugar-apple pie spice mixture onto one corner and folded the whole thing up like a flag. Brush with melted butter and bake at 375 for 15 minutes. These were buttery and flaky and so surprisingly easy! I've seen it called Fillo or Phyllo dough and it is found in a grocer's freezer and all you have to do to is thaw it in your fridge for 24 hours before using. 10 years ago in Greece I ate 2 pastries similar to this but they were filled with feta cheese and dill. Num Num. Spanikopita is a popular Greek spinach and feta filled pastry. Just think of all the different fruit/sweet fillings you could use too!