(wow this was written a few months ago, so but Swiffer photos taken today)
Bored Swiffer?!
Yes well you would be bored too if you had to languish in the laundry room for a few years.
Anthropomorphizing the Swiffer isn't working for me though, how about you?
So I had a crochet project in mind for a while now, probably when
this post (ohhh, fancy new window opening link!) first was linked from Craft last year. I kept thinking I would make one; then got too lazy to bother. I even browsed Etsy multiple times for a handmade
Swiffer cover, but never made a purchase. You know the old I CAN DO IT MYSELF kept getting in the way. Plus I’m cheap when it comes to something made with yarn where there is HOW MUCH YARN around here.
Yeah, that is only the pretty-packaged-looking skeins on a shelf too. The shelf below has a container with the smaller amounts hand wound – you know how unruly a skein gets after it is about half-way gone – as well as another container full of novelty yarns that I am such a
sucker to get for a good deal.
ANYWAY – I’m not sure why, but insomnia crocheting hit me last night as a good idea. I decided that if I made a cover already, then maybe I would stop bitching about the floors being dusty, and I could figure out if making a cover was dumb as heck when I could fight with cutting socks apart and make a reusable cover that way. Crochet seemed like a much better idea, PLUS I loved the colors the pattern used. Yes, that is indeed comparable to liking a car based on color alone. OH PRETTY I WANT TO TRY.
I decided to use stash yarn seeing as the point was to not spend money to help me achieve my objectives; try the pattern, decide if a handmade cover was a good idea, clean the floors better than my current routine. I chose a cotton yarn with the hopes that it would wash well, as well as hold up while being used wet. Now whether there is basis behind cotton being better for those needs or not, I will admit coming to that conclusion based on the fact that knit/crochet dishcloths were traditionally made of cotton yarn (kitchen cotton anyone?) than something to mop the floors should be as well!
From the start I should have read the post more thoroughly before plowing ahead. The link above goes to the site I used for this project, but which I have discovered was not the version I had seen printed previously. DOH.
This single-page instruction style would have helped me much better as I had trouble getting the separate pages of the other site to load – which I have no patience for, we have FiOS!
I picked a cotton yarn that I didn’t think I would use for another project
(because you know, that whole WHAT IF of a yarn stash!) Whatever right? I think I picked the one that has been here the longest and wasn’t the neat candy-cane color that I used a WHOPPING TIME OF ONCE for a custom project.
(See what I mean about the considerations of what should be a simple task?) This skein turned out to be
Peaches & Cream (because Sugar ‘n Cream was too cool for Walmart at one point, but not currently? Whatever) in Lilac Ombre, which turns out that spell check thinks is not a word even though I am reading it right off the label I retrieved from the trash. Ombre. Ombre. Ombre.
After some late night crocheting of the main portion (too tired and too cheap to consider the two-tone effect that made the original so appealing to me) and some time during a Law & Order disk from Netflix, I finished the center section. On to the part in the round, I made faces and fretted about stitch count and corners – you know, enough that I just fudged it and started decreasing at the corners as I saw fit. Had I read the pattern better from either source, I’d have realized THAT WAS THE POINT. I also should have gone with my first choice of a G-hook rather than the H since for some reason my stitches were pretty loose, as opposed to my norm with making plush. Oops. Also when a pattern mentions measuring to something you are trying to cover? You should do that front the start, because I would have noticed my chain being too open. As it was my oversight, I may need to add another row of decreases, which is simple following the pattern’s, well pattern in the same manner.
When it came time to try the cover on, it was a bit too loose. Better than too snug to fit? I tried it out anyway, with the loops side out (which I imagine would have been fine with a chain of three per loop if you are trying to conserve yarn, wait, why are you using it it make a mop cover??) It did a great job in the kitchen, seeing as our vacuum is like UUM NO I HATE YOU AND WILL SPIT THIS BACK AT YOU when it comes to bare floors. Now for the real test – the bathroom. We seem to have a dust problem in the bathrooms. Like the toilet area is a dust magnet. The toilet is not a place I want to be on my hands and knees trying to get at DUST. So it lingers. To a point that it bugs me. This silly cotton cover got it all, even what was stuck the the molding!
(I tried typing moulding, and spellcheck hates it – so I looked it up – turns out molding is appropriate as the US spelling, even thought to me it looks like the process of mold growing, ick.)
Next step was to wash it, maybe see if it shrunk down to a better fit? Maybe because it had been near the toilet? Maybe because it was really gross? Lets just leave it as part of the testing process shall we? Washed nicely without shrinkage, became even softer (you know, in case you have nice floors and not rental linoleum) and still fit the Swiffer.
The whole project gets a thumbs up for being useful, free of cost, eco-friendly (no more mop pads in the trash, or the containers they come in), and money savings (no need to even consider looking to get more of the replacement pads), as well as being a good gift idea. Especially if you have four-pawed family members who don’t help with household chores, which I am confident we will someday. (Sorry it is dirty on the loopy-side, it gets used often!)
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