Mitered Hanging Towel

All it took was a dish towel to get my knitting groove back.

After my trip out east, I got really sick, and then I just wasn't into knitting for a while. But one day, as my mom was making the Mitered Hanging Towel from Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines (free pattern link), I decided to knit one, too. I keep it on the refrigerator:I've washed it at least three times and am happy to report that it is a pleasure to use.

And then I knit another Mitered Hanging Towel, this time for my cousin's bridal shower gift, with a coordinating dishcloth, from the first Mason-Dixon book (free pattern link):
Today, I finished up another, in nifty holiday colors:
My piece of advice for anyone wanting to knit their own Mitered Hanging Towel: use a stitch marker to mark the center of the row (as it says to in the pattern). I tried one without the stitch marker, figuring I would just be able to see where I was supposed to decrease, but that didn't work for the garter ridges. If you're tempted to single-strand the top, don't. Double stranding the yarn at the top means that it doesn't stretch out at the top when you hang it. I've given mine a lot of abuse, and it still looks good. My (minor) modifications to the pattern are given on my Ravelry project pages.

I often go through phases (knitting phases, no-knitting phases, reading phases, baking phases, gardening phases, etc), and I'm pretty happy that this dish towel brought me back into a knitting phase. (Maybe I should note that the dish towel phase was greatly helped by Michael's putting Sugar n Cream on sale for $1.) I'll be posting regularly from now on, I have a lot of other stuff to share! And now I'm off to go watch fireworks... Happy 4th!