Valentine Dishcloth Collection: #1 X's & O's

A week or so ago I bought some cotton yarn in valentine's colors, a couple shades of pink, white and cream, for a project I have been working on and will share soon. After I finished crocheting all of the pieces for that project I still had quite a bit of yarn left. The first idea that popped into my head was to make some dishcloths, that is the thing that I make most often with cotton yarn so it just seemed to make sense to go that route. Besides, I really like using crocheted cotton dishcloths. They are cheap and easy to make and when they are dirty you just throw them in the wash. I thought, why not make some that are not only valentines-ish in color but also in design. I don't really have a lot of valentine's decorations and I thought it would be fun to have something bright, cheery and seasonal in the kitchen. 

I came up with 4 different designs that I will share over the next week or so. They were all made with Lily Sugar and Cream yarn. I bought the 4 oz super size balls on sale at JoAnn's in Rose Pink, Hot Pink and White. With one ball of each color I was able to make the project that I bought them for as well as these four dishcloths and I still have some left to use for something else. 

The first dishcloth that I am sharing I am calling X's and O's. My idea when designing this was to use stitches that would represent x's and o's since that is something often associated with Valentine's Day. I don't know that it worked as well as I had hoped, or turned out exactly the way I had envisioned in my head but nevertheless, here it is.

I used crossed double crochet's to make the x's and for the o's I used a bobble type stitch. I think it would have looked better if I had used an open stitch to make the o's but I am not a huge fan dishcloths that are made with a really open stitch pattern that leaves a lot of holes. I do however, like  a lot of texture to make them more scrubby. I felt like the bobbles would give it texture rather than holes while still having the round shape to represent the o's. Like I said, I am still kind of undecided about whether or not it actually worked but even if it doesn't look like x's and o's it still makes a nice scrubby dishcloth.

You can see that the combination of bobbles and crossed stitches creates a lot of texture on the dishcloth.

To make your own X's and O's dishcloth you will need:

cotton yarn (I used Lily Sugar and Cream in Rose Pink)
H crochet hook
yarn needle for weaving in ends

Now on to the pattern...

*Bobble: (yarn over, insert in space and pull up yarn, yarn over and pull through 2 loops), repeat 2 more times, there should be 4 loops on the hook, yarn over and pull through all 4, bobble made. You may need to push it out a little with your finger to make it pop out.

Start by chaining 27 (26 +1 for turning)

Row 1: sc in 2nd ch from hook and in each ch across (26 sc)

Row 2: ch 3 (counts as first dc), (skip 2, dc in next, ch 1, dc in first skipped stitch) repeat this across until there is one stitch remaining, dc in last stitch (8 x's [dc, ch1, dc 2 stitches behind] and 2 dc)

Row 3: ch 1 to turn, sc in each dc and ch space across (26 sc)

Row 4: ch 2 (counts as first hdc), hdc in next stitch, bobble (see above for instructions) in next stitch, hdc in next 2 stitches, (bobble, 2 hdc) to the end (8 bobbles, 18 hdc)

Row 5: ch 1 to turn, sc across (26 sc)

Repeat rows 2-5 three more times then repeat rows 2 and 3 once more. You should have 5 rows of x's and 4 rows of bobbles.

To finish sc around the outside 1 sc in each stitch along top and bottom, 3 in each corner and evenly along the sides. Slip stitch to first sc. Finish off and weave in ends.

That's it. One down, three more to go. Look for them later this week and possibly next week.