Circular Potholders

The past couple of days I’ve been working on making potholders. In the past I’ve made them by sewing 2 square dishcloths together or by using a double-thick pattern, like this one, which makes a gorgeous potholder but takes a long time and a lot of yarn.

I wanted something quick and easy, I also had a lot of cotton yarn in various lengths and colours so I wanted something that I could change colours easily when my scraps of yarn ran out.

Here’s what I came up with:

A circular potholder! These work up really quickly, they’ve been taking me under an hour from start to finish. I think they look nice with both variegated and solid colours. I made 4 out of cotton and 1 out of wool.

Taa-daa!

Hooray for busting through my cotton stash! There’s still some left, but this definitely left a dent. I think I’m going to try making some felted ones with my wool stash.

I’m still a little undecided which one I like the most. I think the purple/green one is my favourite, but my partner likes the green/beige one.

Basically I made 2 circles using double crochet, then joined them together. It’s a pretty straight-forward pattern, but nonetheless I wrote it up to share.

Circular Potholder

*Note: Ch 3 at start of every round counts as a stitch

Materials:

-Worsted weight cotton or wool (I’ve read that acrylic will melt, but I’m not sure if it’s true)

-Size I/5.5 hook

** A note about gauge: **

If you’re finding that your circle is curving up into a bowl-shape, you need to go up a hook size. (Try size J/6.0)

If you’re finding that your circle is too slack and when you try to lay it flat there’s an extra bit of material that you can’t smooth down, you need to go down a hook size. (Try size H/5.0)

Pattern (make 2):

Round 1:  In a magic circle, ch 3 (counts as 1 DC), work 11 DC into ring, join. {12}

Round 2: Ch 3, work 2 DC into each st around (11 times). Work 1 DC into last st, join. {24}

Round 3: Ch 3, (work 2 DC into next st and 1 DC into next st), repeat around (10 more times). Work 2 DC into last st, join. {36}

Round 4: Ch 3, (work 2 DC into next st and 1 DC into each of the next 2 sts), repeat around (10 more times). Work 2 DC into next st and 1 DC into next st, join. {48}

Round 5: Ch 3, (work 2 DC into next st and 1 DC into each of the next 3 sts), repeat around (10 more times). Work 2 DC into next st and 1 DC into next 2 sts, join. {60}

For the next round I switched to single crochet

Round 6: Ch 1 (does not count as a st), (work 2 SC into next st and 1 SC into each of the next 4 sts), repeat around and join to first SC {72}

Fasten off, weave in ends.

Finishing:

– Holding the 2 ‘wrong sides’ together, join the 2 circles together.

Edging options:

– Single crochet around

-Slip stitch around

-Crab stitch/reverse single crochet (this is the one I used for the cotton potholders)

Edging with reverse single crochet

For the ring (optional):

– Ch 10, sl st into potholder, ch1 & turn

– Sc 15 evenly into ring created by chain (i.e. not into individual stitches, just into the ring)

Colour Block Blanket

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a nice holiday season. Here in Northern British Columbia it’s been snowing like mad, which wouldn’t be a bad thing except a couple of days ago it rained and the streets froze into a sheet of ice. Needless to say, it’s pretty treacherous outside…

Brrr! Baby it’s cold outside

A couple of days ago I completed a blanket. This is my fastest one yet, I finished it in 6 days – a huge record for me. My mother-in-law bought me this yarn for Christmas. My yarn stash is already huge and I’ve been trying to work through it with some stash-busting projects so I’m pretty pleased I was able to use it up so quickly. I still have waaaay more yarn than I know what to do with though.

So without further ado, here’s my super-quick, stash-busting, and colourful blanket:

Taa-daa!

Here’s the pattern:

Worsted weight yarn – I used Waverly for Bernat in antique, pink suede, butter, celadon, & greek sea. I used about 300m of each colour (approx 1 + 2/3 skeins)

Size N hook

Chain desired width of blanket, I chained 100

1) Ch 2 loosely for turning chain, dc in 3rd ch from hook and in each ch across

2) Ch 2 loosely and turn, dc in 3rd chain from hook and in each dc across, dc final stitch into 2nd ch (of turning chain)

Repeat row 2 until desired length. I did 20 rows of each colour, 100 rows total. My blanket was really long and narrow, if I were to do it again I would probably do a wider blanket for this length (i.e. chain 120 & keep 100 rows) or make it shorter (i.e. chain 100 & shorten it to 80 rows total / 16 rows per colour)

It’s a bit too long and narrow for my double bed

Happy stitching folks! 🙂