Yesterday was a terrifically fun day. This past week I received my copy of Mason Dixon knitting which I ordered after reading glowing reviews all over everyone's blogs for the past several weeks (and thinking that the moderne baby blanket looked fabulous!).
While sitting at the table eating breakfast Saturday morning, S picked it up and started leafing through pages. When he got to the Absorba bathmat, he suggested I should make one. He kept looking and when he got to the calamari knitting idea suggested that this looked like a great idea. I went around, looked at the book, and agreed it looked like a great idea. I think it called to both of our environmentally inclined hearts -- a way to recycle old t-shirts!
A trip to the closet to pull out needles (US 17s were the largest I had) and an old shirt and I started swatching. We liked the way it looked but decided that trying US 35s would be a good plan. After dinner that night, a stop by the store, and 35s were in hand for another swatch. Bigger bumps… good. The only question, how to fit an entire rug onto 14” long needles? Hmm… three rows of fabric, sewn together? Victory… a plan was hatched.
Sunday morning the book was still on the table and the topic came up again. I said, why don’t you go see how many old shirts you have and we can see if we can do it. After initial protests that he had work to do, a few short moments later he disappeared and then a big stack of shirts came of out the closet and onto the table. Well, my oh my, a few minutes later we had cleared off the table and started cutting “calamari” and planning our color scheme.
Fun, fun… a collaborative knitting project with S! I cut, he created the variegated yarn, and then I started knitting it up.
This is a very rewarding, if a bit messy, project (notice all the shirt flakes from where we cut the t-shirts … I’d recommend working on a hard surface for easy clean up). The “yarn” is fun… whatever color shirts you have. We decided to make it primarily white/cream with some blues and grays thrown in for excitement. S did a fabulous job creating a great irregular pattern. The giant ball of yarn is the most fun. And then the inches pile onto the rug soooo fast … very gratifying!
In a very short time we had about half the rug completed (and discovered we’ll have to make more yarn… no trouble here, we have plenty of shirts left!). A great easy project… one I’d recommend for people with kids or someone just wanting to do something quick and easy. I’ll keep you posted as it finishes itself up.
So Sunday, a fun knitting day… inspired me to start square 2 of the Aran Afghan which I cast on this morning. (And yes, I have decided that the braid panel might have taken longer than most of the others… cabling on every other row. We’ll find out soon.)
Hope your week starts off well too!
p.s. I've applied for the Academics Knit, California Knitters, KnittyKitty, Purling Pups, and KnittyHeads rings. The links won't work until I'm accepted but have been added in prep. Thanks!
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