Cotton Rag Bath Mat

I've noticed some of the knitting club girls have been getting a little lazy lately. Our last meetings have been mostly eating, eating, chatting and a little more eating.

This is why I decided to post this tutorial by coco knits.

I think this is mat is a brilliant idea, specially because it is a very fast and easy knit, and also because you can make it out of recycled material. I hope it gets your knitting juices going girls!

Size

Approximately 18" wide and desired length. The sample is 36” long for a bathtub, it can be shorter for a smaller shower.

Materials

Yarn

Sample used two pre-washed twin size sheets ripped into 1 ½” strips and connected as per the rag knitting tutorial on cocoknits.com.

Needles

# 19 needles.

Gauge

Using # 19 needles over moss st, approximately 1 st per inch.

Abbreviations

CO – cast on

BO – bind off

st(s) – stitch(es)

c4b – cable 4 sts behind. Slip next 4 sts onto cable needle (in this case I used a chopstick) and hold at the back of your work. Knit 4 sts, then knit 4 from cable needle.

Directions

CO 26 sts.

Row 1, 3, 7 (RS): [k1, p1] four times, p1, k8, p1, [p1, k1] four times.

Row 2 and all WS rows: [k1, p1] four times, k1, p8, k1, [p1, k1] four times.

Row 5: [k1, p1] four times, p1, c4b, p1, [p1, k1] four times.

Repeat these 8 rows until you reach the desired length. BO on a row 1 of pattern.

Finishing

add fringe by cutting rag “yarn” into 4" long pieces and attaching to either edge as follows

Fold strip in half and pull the fold through the c.o. edge with a crochet hook:

Then push the ends through the loop you created and pull until it’s snug:

Headband Mania

Today was no chit-chat morning. Three ladies from the knitting club came over to my house to learn how to make the flower headband. Both Mery and Aviva were really concentrated and determined to understand the pattern. And the third lady, you might ask? The third lady was Mary's mom. Glued to the cel phone she took part of the meeting on speaker phone. Silvia Abadi is now part of our knitting club and our official representative in Mexico City, welcome to the club girl!

Increases and decreases in the pattern were a bit of a challenge tough, thus we came up with our own visual chart. Although it might look odd for those experienced knitters, it really worked for us!

By the way, The Flower Headband posting has been updated with a little information on the knitted flower pattern. I have added a link to a tutorial video as well. The flower on this new headband I made is done in crochet and it is slightly bigger than Andreas grey one, it is about 11.5 x 11.5 cm.

If you like them oversized, check this one out- from Urban Outfitters. The crochet flower I made is very similar to this one. The actual headband is really fast and easy to make on circular needles... use it as a neck warmer if you wish.

911- Twisted Stitch When Knitting on the Round

Some of the ladies had to restart their projects a few times when knitting on circular needles. The reason for this is that when knitting on the round you are knitting on the right side of the fabric all the time. If you are a Combined Knitter (like most of us at the knitting club) you have to make sure not to twist the stitches when knitting. Depending on your particular method of knitting, the stitches will be presented on the needle differently. The idea is to concentrate on the actual stitch "loop" being careful that the "legs" of the stitch are opened up and not crossed. If you twist the stitch, you will see that the "legs" create an X at the bottom of the stitch.

UNTWISTED STITCH:

TWISTED STITCH:

Although there are times when crossing or twisting stitches are done intentionally, in the case of the israeli hats, it created an undesirable result. Twisted stitches are tighter than standard stitches and they create a fabric that is stiffer than plain knitting. This can ruin the drape of a sweater and it can also prevent a piece of knitting from felting because felting requires loose stitches that move around during the felting process.

This is how a basic stockinette stitch looks when knitted normally:

This is what basic stockinette stitch will look if you twist the stitches:

For instructional videos further explaining this, go to: Knitting Help.com. Watch the video on Combined Knitting.

Another way to avoid having the twisted stitches is to change your method of knitting to the Continental Knitting method. This method is very similar to Combined Knitting only the purling is done a little differently. An easy instructional video is also shown at Knitting Help.com . I personally like the Combined method because I find the purling much faster and easier to execute. So what I do when knitting with circular needles is I untwist the stitches as I shown above rather than changing the way a I grab the yarn when knitting.

Better late than never... happy knitting