Elegy for a Faded Dishcloth

It has come to this. My once-glorious dishrag drawer is faded and bedraggled. I first noticed the general lowering of the tone of my dishcloths quite a while ago, but I kept pushing aside such unthinkable thoughts. The fact is, I’ve not been in the dishcloth knitting mood for a while now.

Then, recently, a visitor commented on the sad state of my also-once-glorious tea towels. I had to face it: I’ve let myself go. The tea towel situation was fixed easily by a trip to Crate and Barrel, where the reproduction Vera tea towels are cheap and plentiful. I sadly cut my grayed-out old tea towels in half and put them on the rag pile: goodbye old friends, we had fun. But those new tea towels—their crispness, their brightness, their lack of gashes and dangling threads—cast the dire Dishrag Situation into sharper relief.

But I still don’t feel like knitting dishrags. It’s a special mood, the urge to knit a dozen dishcloths . . . And my knitting is entirely mood driven these days. I will not knit a thing unless I absolutely feel like knitting it. There’s only one way out: store-bought dishrags.

Hold me.