Tawashi, or ‘eco scrubbies’, a popular small crochet project in Japan, are small dishcloths or pot scrubbers made from acrylic yarn. The benefit of acrylic is that it is amazingly good at removing food particles from dishes, meaning you need less soap for greasy dishes, and no soap at all for ordinary washing-up. This is great news for those on a budget, and for anyone concerned about the effect of phosphates in our detergents on the environment and natural water ecosystems.
It’s common here to wash dishes under a cold running tap, so as the tawashi removes food particles, they are rinsed straight away. This uses a little more water, but cuts the cost of heating said water.
They are made of acrylic yarn – the cheaper and scratchier the better! I’ve found that ones made with plasticky 100-yen-shop yarn and a dense stitch pattern such as single crochet can even clean saucepans without soap.
You can make them in a huge variety of designs – squares, cute animals, fruit, flowers – anything that takes your fancy really. This rainbow pattern is taken from my forthcoming ebook of tawashi patterns.
For this project you need:
- Acrylic yarn – cheaper and scratchier is better. You need around 15-20m each of 5 different colours – tawashi are great for using up scraps.
- crochet hook
- knowledge of single crochet stitch and how to work an increase in single crochet (see this post for how to single crochet and make an increase)
Starting with purple, chain 5 stitches
turn, and single crochet twice into each chain stitch.
Turn, chain 1, then (single crochet 2 into one stitch, single crochet 1) four times.
Change to blue
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc2) 4 times
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc3) 4 times
Change to green
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc4) 4 times
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc5) 4 times
Change to yellow
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc6) 4 times
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc7) 4 times
Change to red
ch1, (sc2 into next st, sc8) 4 times
ch1, sc2 into next st, sc9, make a loop of 10 chain stitches then sc into same st, (sc2 into next st, sc9) 3 times
Weave in loose ends.
The loop is so your tawashi can be hung up to dry, discouraging bacteria. Rinse well after use, hang to dry, and throw it in a hot wash once a week. Depending on the yarn and how much washing up you do, they should last quite a while.
P.S.If you enjoyed this pattern, check out my latest pattern book!
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I’ve been meaning to make some of these using my acrylic scraps. So far I’ve only done cotton dishcloths. When I first made them, my husband was very confused but he won’t use anything else now. Thanks for the pattern – I’ll definitely give it a try!
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Lovely! I would love to do a crochet of tawashi. You have a good instruction on how to do it so it would be easy for me to make one. I think I can have different colors to suite my desires. Thanks a lot.
Hmmm… I’ve knit cotton dishcloths, but have had trouble with them getting “sour” very quickly. Wonder if acrylic would fix this problem? Great blog! Logs of fun crafts– I’ll be adding you to my reader!
Acrylic is nowhere near as absorbent as cotton is, so is not so much of a home for bacteria which mke cotton cloths go grotty after a while – so they shouldn’t go sour as quick as cotton cloths
nd thankyou
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