Knitting pot-scrubbers.
It's right up there with washing out zip lock bags. Wait, I do that, too - often rescuing them from work colleagues as they stand poised over the garbage bin. *sigh*
Anyway, these are great little scrubbers - harsh enough to move cooked on stuff, but kind on enamel and non-stick pans. We still use steel wool on the cast-iron if it needs it, though.
The pattern is Ravelled and appears on Berlin Whimsy's blog. She gives instructions for repurposing tulle into yarn for this project.
I've modified it a bit. I use smaller needles to get a firmer scrubbie, knit it an inch shorter and use up the ends of rolls of knitting nylon that appear cheaply in op shops rather than cutting up tulle (although there's some mosquito netting just begging to be repurposed lying around here somewhere).
Using two strands of the knitting nylon and one strand of 8ply (or thereabouts) cotton and 5mm needles, cast on 15 stitches. Garter stitch until work measures 10cm. Cast off. Sewing in the ends one strand at a time.
Not pleasant knitting, but quick and practical. I use up little ends of reels and don't worry too much about colour matching - they scrub pots, they aren't art.
As a rule of thumb, you'll need three - one on, one in the wash and one in the drawer.
Oh, and don't knit them in public and wax lyrical about them if you don't want to spend the rest of your life knitting them in quantity for everyone you know and their Mums. If you make that mistake, the going rate is a large soy latte and/or the sugar free berry muffin from that little shop around the corner - just so's you know.
