Category: Beginner

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

I know that phrase is often used as a dramatic understatement by someone whose yarn treasure could feed a dragon and its extended family for a long weekend, but for me, a few cubbies of half balls and random impulse buys is usually enough to set me on the path to a stash busting event.

I’ve been sensitive to any real build-up of yarn scraps ever since we had a clothes moths infestation a few decades ago. (thank you, rolled-up, hand-me-down rug we didn’t realise was covered in moth eggs until it was way too late)

And so, now, when it all gets a bit too mountainous in my studio, I sit on the floor and sort my odd balls and left-over bits into colour-themed hills.

I grade colour piles from “lots” to “not that much yarn, really”, and I get to work making a floor mat.

I find the process of crocheting with BIG yarn and a BIG hook, and the heave-ho that comes with a heavy, growing mass of fabric like this, to be very therapeutic. It’s exercise for my arms and shoulders, it’s a dopamine hit for my head, and it feels like “tidying” even as I’m just doing my favourite thing.

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.

Just a short note to spread the word, folks.

I have finally written the pattern for my new (old?) shawl, Bríd.

She is a circular shawl with a hole in the centre and a swirling vortex of segments all the way around. The segments and their curve add movement and drape, and the gently chevroned colour work at the edge is inspired by the tilt and contrast of bird feathers.

Bríd can be worn multiple ways.

For a full circle, you’ll need 520 m / 570 yards of your Main Colour (I have used Ériu Elements Luxury Irish Wool #1061 Ceremony) and 170 m / 186 yards for your Contrast Colour (#1053 Selkie)

And you’ll need a 6 mm, regular length crochet hook. As with all my patterns, a long, Tunisian-specific hook isn’t needed, but avoid using a hook with an ergonomic handle.

The main reason I’m keen to test this shawl is that, even though it is quite a simple shawl to make, the directions have to hop between traditional crochet terminology, to my lovely linked stitch nomenclature, then to regular Tunisian crochet terms to complete each segment.

It’s the only way I can see to keep the pattern from becoming a million pages long. (That’s a slight exaggeration, but I am looking to ensure it’s efficient and doesn’t ramble)

I think I just need the reassurance of a few testers to tell me it’s navigable, you know?

If you’re interested in testing her, please comment below. I’ll reply with an affirmative if you’re in the pot.

I’ve been teaching sundry traditional crafts classes for a good two decades now, and I pride myself on my patience, gentle encouragement and my ability to help struggling crafters improve at their own pace. I’m happy to repeat, I don’t show impatience, I centre joy and try to teach a love of the craft alongside the necessary skills to succeed.

In fact, up until I met this one student – let’s call her Mary – I actively described myself as a teacher who never left a student behind.

Thanks to Mary, I don’t make that claim anymore.

Now, before you judge me for making fun of a struggling student, hear me out. Stick with me. I promise it’s worth it.

Here’s how it went down.

Mary’s adult daughter contacted me, asking if her, her sister and their mother could book me for a family crochet class. I love working with related students. The dynamic is always brilliant. There are family jokes, a little teasing, well-worn stories to tell, and a comfort between people that you just don’t get at a table full of strangers, so I said yes, I’d love to.

They arrived at my studio, and for the first little while, all seemed normal. They were all beginners, so they all struggled with holding the hook, with managing their yarn, with making chains. But while the two sisters worked and progressed steadily, their mother didn’t.

Now, being as I never let a willing student flounder, I focussed on Mary.

Mary would wrap the yarn around the hook multiple times, and make a tangled, gnarling knot.
I’d remind her she only has to wrap it once.
After I undid the muddle and handed the hook and yarn back, Mary would wrap it multiple times again.

After we’d done that dance for a while, Mary would pull the loops off the hook without wrapping at all, yanking the yarn in the process, thus losing all her stitches.
I’d re-do the lost stitches so she had something to hold, I’d explain the single step I wanted her to take, then she’d do the same thing again.

Meanwhile, the sisters had their own questions, and understandably, they were getting annoyed with me for not managing my time between them all. They wanted to progress, to increase, decrease, figure out why their edges looked a bit wonky. All good, solid beginner stuff they had an absolute right to learn in a first class. But the fact was, every time I turned my eyes from Mary, I’d hear “Oh…”, turn back, and something new and tragic would have happened to her crochet.

Mary worried.

Mary blamed herself.

Mary’s daughters kept saying that she wasn’t good at this at all. Their impatience with their mother, and with me, was obvious.

I comforted and reset Mary over and over.

But despite using all my tricks, all my experience, every time I blinked, Mary made a mess.

There was simply no escaping Mary.

It was an hour and a half of this, folks. Ninety interminable minutes of “Not like that, Mary, like this,” “Do you remember what we said about the yarn over?”, “your hook needs to go in there, Mary.”

Now, I know some of you are thinking “Poor Mary sounds like she’s got a cognitive issue.” I thought the same. I’ve taught many elderly people over the years, I’ve taught quite a few of them with memory issues, with dexterity issues, with signs of dementia. Usually a carer tells me in advance so I’m prepared. Usually, a carer won’t be impatient to learn much themselves if the focus is on their charge. As far as I’m concerned, progress looks different for different people, and for people in mental decline, I see progress as them being present at a class; anything else is a bonus.

In this case, I got no volunteered info on Mary, so I soldiered on. I was all manner of patient, gentle, repetitive with Mary. If Mary wanted to learn, I was gonna teach her.

It wasn’t until the end of class – as they were leaving – that the sister who booked me said to me “I don’t think this is gonna work out.”

Reluctantly, I had to agree. I felt crest-fallen, though. I’d let them down. I’d taken three aspiring crocheters and in my care they’d chosen to quit. That broke my heart, it really did. I’d become the “bad teacher” I heard about so often from students who’d been told by less skilled tutors that they just didn’t have the talent to crochet. I hate the idea that someone would be dismissed like that, and yet, here I was admitting defeat with poor Mary.

Then I heard the other sister out at the car – in a very loud voice – tell her mother that she “PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE TURNED HER HEARING AID ON”.

Lads. Folks. Mesdames et Messieurs. My soul left earth for a moment while I digested this.

The sister who I was speaking to shrugged and told me. “She likes to save the battery”.

What the ever-living, actual fluff!

MARY HADN’T HEARD A SINGLE BLESSED WORD I’D SAID. And…aaaand. The daughters knew she wasn’t able to hear, either.

I could have cried.

But, I am nothing if not a crafting optimist. They may have learnt next to nothing from that ninety minute madness, but I can say for certain, I surely did.

I still promote myself as a teacher who never leaves a student behind, but I add an important caveat – MARY, TURN YOUR HEARING AID ON!