giant knit alert

At last...



pattern: Kiki Mariko rug from Mason Dixon Knitting: Outside the lines
yarn: Cascade 220 and Patons Classic Wool (many, many different colours...)
needles: 10mm



Done, and totally a fun knit!

I made this bigger than the pattern called for, casting on 154 stitches, and knit with both those yarns double-stranded.

This started out as a stash-busting project (yes, I know I am ALL ABOUT those lately) --I promise to stop saying the words "stash-busting" quite as much from here on in. (You should just assume that is pretty much always happening). I will alert the media if I ever use it all up. I started out with all those random colours I had leftover from the Missoni-inspired blanket but that plan quickly fell through when I pretty much ran out of all of them and had to go out and buy more anyway.

Honestly, why did I think I would have enough? I was doing a giant felted rug that I was making bigger than the pattern called for in the first place! Hmmm, I believe we call that knitting on a wing and a prayer or something.

Soooo, had I been smart enough to actually realize this I probably would have started with some completely different colours from the get-go, but I wasn't and I didn't. I plunged ahead without a care for colour placement. If one purple ran out I'd just start a different one, or maybe a pink. Things actually start to look a little more cohesive by the second half of the rug because that is when I actually bought new yarn and managed to keep things more consistent. Even still, I wasn't about to tear back. If things turned out kind of crazy-looking, I was okay with that.

In the end I had an enormous, crazy-coloured, knit tube:



and when you flipped it over --- this crazy checkerboard strip that was to become my first steeks:



and then into a hot bath it went:



I felted it once, then cut my steek (I realized later that I didn’t cut in a very straight line…so when all was said and done I wound up trimming off more of the steeks on either side again to make it more even) then pulled it out to see how it looked.

I was happy with the size, but attempted to just felt the ends a bit more to try and get that “ruffly” edge shrunk up a bit more. I did this as suggested by someone else--I folded it in half and then dangled the edges into the washing machine (I had to cram my pinky into the door mechanism in order to get the machine to agitate with the lid up) but then finally I just got tired of standing there the entire time and threw the whole thing in for the final rinse cycle again. So really it got felted twice when all was said and done.

I pinned it out and let it dry for about 48 hours, then blanket-stitched the edge (double-stranded) instead of whip-stitching cuz I thought it looked a little tidier. I combed it with a sweater comb to get the fuzz off and it’s nice and soft under-foot now.



And there you have it. Final measurements gave me a rug that was about 4X3 feet.

And then after all my recently H-U-G-E knits the idea of doing some sweaters is starting to seem small and jiffy-quick, so a couple of those may be on the sticks very soon.

But nothing was a jiffy quick as these:

Dishcloths!


I am feeling very on top of gift-knitting this year (for once)...



There are about 6 different dishcloth patterns in that pile, so have a look on Ravelry if you'd like to know which patterns I used.

xo Cara