My Scrap Mat Formula

Every few years my yarn stash gets “a little out of hand”.

In the grand tradition of my mother’s colour rules, often I’ll eschew gradients or anything that’s overly harmonious. In this house, we like a colour clash. We invite in the orange and the pink and the lime green. We add navy and black and brown with no regard for colour theory. We put the weird green beside the other weird green.

“Dash it all!” I say, colour rules are made to be broken!

But, soberly… there are some other guidelines that don’t brook breaking;

First: I choose the two biggest colour-themed piles, and I hold on to one of them for the mat’s border. When we get that far out from the sun, it takes so much yarn to make one full round that you’ll need miles and mountains of fluff to make any sort of an impact. And I like a mat with a decent border. It’s art. It deserves a frame.

The big pile that I keep close at hand gets used right away. I hold a strand or two from that pile at all times as I crochet. This ensures a cohesive colour element remains in play and gives the finished product an intentional look.

Second: Another important thing to remember is that fiber content matters. You do not want all your feltable wool residing in one big stripe and the rest of the mat made out of acrylic and cotton. The first time you accidentally wash it at 30 degrees, you’ll end up with a bunched up felted section that adds ridges and valleys to your mat that you will end up fighting against until the end of time.

I speak from experience, folks. It’s no es bueno.

Instead, I ensure I have at least 20% or so wool running through the entire thing, and then I bulk that up with cottons, acrylics and whatever randos I have close by. Variation in feltable fibre content is fine, but I wouldn’t wiggle too far in one direction or the other.

Then, I locate my trusty mat hook (a 9 mm wonder) and I start.

In this case, I had one of those massive bumper balls of Aran-weight yarn that’s about 25% wool. It’s not good quality, but it is a nice maroon, so to start, I held that triple-stranded and gathered up a couple of strands of fingering weight yarn. That remained the thinkness I maintained throughout. About 3-4 Aran’s worth, or in technical terms aabout 4 wraps per inch.

The notion is that every time one yarn ball runs out, I add another, and work my way through my busted stash until I’m done.

I replace a DK with a few strands of fingering weight. Two DK strands can replace an Aran, or vice versa. Introducing a chunky yarn means I’ll have to drop a couple of Arans or a whole heap of 4-ply. You get the idea. I just keep building and using yarns as necessary to keep the stitches squishy and thick.

The accepted rule for making a flat circle with UK double crochet stitches is to do 6 sts on the first round and to add 6 stitches evenly every round thereafter. So, first round is 6, second round is 12, third is 18, 24, 30, 36, etc., etc., etc. But, I think we all know if you follow that to the letter, you don’t end up with a circle, you end up with a hexagon.

There’s the added complication that holding multiple strands at once will mean that the stitches in one round won’t be the same gauge as the stitches in the next. It’s important to try and keep it consistent, but alas, despite your best efforts you’ll still find that chunky boys on one round will inevitably give way to slimmer lads on the next. Lumpy stitches happen.

So, 6 extra stitches per row simply does not compute in the real world.

Instead, here is my pattern (of sorts):

I start with 7 stitches, and I increase my stitch count evenly by seven for the first 6 rounds.
So, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42… (Essentially, I do 7 rounds-worth of increasing in the span of 6 rounds.)

Then, for a round or two, I do no increases at all.

This ebb and flow of tension in the increases means that I’m never UNDER the number of stitches I need – having slightly too few stitches is way worse than having slightly too many – and it ensures I can always pull back with a blank, no-increase round if things get a teeny bit out of hand.

After every set of increase rounds (and their accompanying blank rounds) I tend to shift where I place my increases, too. That way, each set of increase rounds have their points off-set from the last, making for a more uniform circle.

Eventually, when I begin to run out of balls that can span an entire circle (or when my theme colour starts to run out), I’ll switch entiely to that big pile of yarn I put aside at the start. Adding a few rounds of that sees my border complete.

All there is then is to give it a gentle, cold wash to block and settle it all down, and then I plop it on the floor somewhere warm, reshape it and let it dry off entirely. (If you have wooden floors like I do, make sure you flip your wet mat and change its location while it dries, so you don’t damage your floor)

My mats have been used for years and years to teach our dogs to sit politely, and once they understand what to do, we’ve flung the mats into our van to bring with us on doggy adventures to give them a familiar “den” wherever they go.

These mats have been used in the garden for my niece and nephew to picnic and play on, they’ve kept my feet warm when I cook in our cold, winter kitchen, too. They also add a personal touch and brighten up any room.

Making them is a massive mood booster for me. The repetitive nature is soothing, and it feels like a useful thing to do when I’m worried about something else.

This latest one, for instance, has helped me process the idea of welcoming a new rescue dog into our home.

I don’t know who that dog will be, but I can bet – much like Rosie and Henry and Korra before them – our new pup will enjoy snoozing and playing (and, let’s face it, probably piddling) on my crochet mats just as much as they did.

And that, I think, is the best possible way to use up left-over yarn.

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