Feathering and fanning

This is what I've been piddling around on. Isn't it great, especially in this blue? The pattern was a freebie off a cotton yarn skein that I've had for a while. I had attempted it about a year ago when I was feeling brave and wanted to try lace. I had been noticing I majorly needed more dishcloths, knew I really liked knitted ones, tried this pattern, gotten frustrated with a mistake in the pattern which my inexperience couldn't pin-point, frogged everything, and forgot about it. I found the pattern when I was organizing everything and stopped to read it, realizing what made me stop in the first place. It's called "Feather and Fan" (nothing wrong with that), neglects to give gauge (even though that doesn't really matter; it IS just a dishcloth) or final measurements (um, IS a problem), DOES give a needle size to knit on (but if you don't have gauge, how will you know you will have enough yarn, especially since you don't know how big it's going to be in the first place, hmmm???), and the picture is white-on-white with the cloth a little rumpled. All you can tell is it might be a little lacey. No clear anything on what to expect. No help from the pattern itself except a clearly stated 3 row repeat in the directions that they say is 6 rows. Makes me think "Fitted Knits" tried to do dishcloths as a side-job.

I started the pattern blind, obviously, creating something new and mysterious to wipe my counters with and also trying this out to see if it would make a great lacey scarf for that mercerized cotton I have. I knew that I had 2 skeins of yarn to use and somehow I would get the deminsions I wanted. Soon I found out (now that I have a tiny scrap of knowledge knitting lace) that the problem I had a year ago in the beginning was a major typo in the directions: where they say "yfwd" it is SUPPOSED to say "yo." Kinda important. I knitted awhile, proud of myself for figuring that out, and then looked at the progress and wondered where the "feather" and the "fan" was going to show up. I figured out the 3 row repeat they said was 6 rows is really 3 rows repeated twice where one set of 3 rows you see the knit side of stockinette and the other set of 3 is the purl side of stockinette (did you get that?) but no fancy feather and fanning. I decided there must be a row missing somewhere but kept knitting because, again, this WAS only a dishcloth and it really wouldn't matter, even if it ended up triangle shaped if the k2tog and yo didn't match up. That's when I noticed that the yo-s and k2tog-s made a ripple pattern. I have only crocheted ripples, never knitted them, and once that started happening (about 4 inches into the project) the pattern really showed up lovely. It was a nice surprise and a great one for a rectangular dishcloth to use in the kitchen. 2 50 oz. skeins will make the perfect size and this is a great project for anyone wanting to start lace and ripples.