Somehow in almost five years of living together, G and I have never managed to own a normal number of hot mats or trivets. I think we had two – one is glass and gets brought out for special occasions; the other is wood and was regularly used for the teapot up until its recent demise, when the glue holding the laminated pieces together finally dissolved after washing it for the umpty-ninth time. So now we have two useless half-trivets and one I-can-hardly-stand-the-clanking glass one. Not a sustainable situation!
Fortunately, G had an idea! We were talking about this video of Rachel John knitting with 1000 strands of yarn and he said, “Could you make a hot mat like that? Holding, like, 20 strands of dishcloth cotton together? You could use dowel from my wood shop for needles!” Well, dowel sounded a lot less comfortable than the smooth plastic 12mm needles in my stash, but the idea was a great one, as you can see!
In the end, I used 12 strands for the square mat and 8 for the round one, working from both ends of several balls of dishcloth cotton. For the square one, I cast on 9 stitches and worked in seed stitch until it was square-ish. The round one is worked flat, in garter stitch, then sewed up. I cast on 5 stitches and increased 5 across every right-side row until it was “large enough.” Either bind off on a wrong side row or, as I did, increase 5 while binding off. These mats only took about 1/3 of each of the balls of yarn I had, so it would be a great project if you’ve been knitting dishcloths and have leftovers in several colours! I think you could go as few as 4 strands and still have a decent hot mat.
Yes, it was a bit unwieldy…two mats was about as much as I could manage in a day before my wrists started hurting from wrestling with such a thick “yarn.” But they’re so cheerful! I will definitely be making more, and you should too!
There so cute! this give me an idea to make a cup coaster, as i never seem to have one when im sitting in the living room~
Yes! I made coasters around Christmas (just one strand of yarn, but multiple would be fun too) and they’re super, including being great to mop up spills!
That’s really nice. I was thinking it would be a great way of recycling plastic bags too. Some people make cut them into yarn and make really nice things with them.
🙂
What an interesting idea! I don’t know if I would want to put a mat made out of plastic bags under a hot pot that had just come out of the oven…but for placemats or to go under plants it could be really cute (and environmentally conscious!).
Yep, I agree. Maybe not for trivets, but for coasters or as placemats I bet it would work. You could even make litlle rugs for your dolls!
And is one way of getting rid of those plastic bags that as much as I try I end up accumulating. My favourite idea though is a reusable grocery bag made of plastic bags. And I mean this kind of thing:
http://www.purlbee.com/crocheted-linen-grocery-tote/
I’m having a go at that one right now with green plastic bags from our local supermarket to have a rough idea of how many you need to make something like that.
To make them into yarn after checking outt different systems, this one seemed the easiest and it works. You get one single ribbon that you only need to roll into a ball.
http://www.wikihow.com/Prepare-Plastic-Bags-for-Knitting-or-Crochet
So far three plastic bags have been stripped into yarn for the greater good or for experimentation’s sake and I’m not even halfway through it. I chose that pattern because it only requires some basic crochet and I think it will be sturdy enough to carry veggies. The plastic yarn is being surprisingly easy to handle. We’ll see! If the end result is not that great I will find it some use indoors, i.e. where no one has to see it. But I know you could do really pretty things!
In my case it’s also a good way of learning how to knit that bag without wasting real yarn. If I succeed as I will have no plastic bags around I might make one out of linen yarn.
I like this one better but I don’t think you could use plastic bags as a material, plus it’s way too complex for me!
http://www.masondixonknitting.com/archives/2008_09.html#002491
In any case I’ll use the occasion to say that I really enjoy reading about your projects and I love your photos, although I don’t usually leave a comment. 🙂
It’s nice to know that people are out there reading!
Those two bags are quite cool. Have you seen this one from Knitty? http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring05/PATTmeshbags.html
Thanks for the link to the tutorial. Apparently you can use the same technique for recycling t-shirts as well!