Knitting a Living Room Rug

I just recently moved into a new house and I’m in the process of unpacking and decorating. I actually picked the colors of my living room based on a Knitpicks.com Swish kit which was recently on sale – plum (blackberry), silver and grey were the colors of the kit in a superwash wool, bulky weight. I figured I’d make an afghan for myself, since the GroovyGhan (see the header of the blog) is going downstairs to the living room down there. I ordered plum paint for an accent wall (it is currently brown) and I put tons of plum and silver decorations in my Amazon wish list, hoping I might get some of them for Christmas.

Then I started shopping for rugs. I saw rugs near the size I want – 7 ft by 5 ft – on Pottery Barn’s web site for almost $1000! Sure they are wool and I’m sure they are great quality, but I started thinking – couldn’t I knit a rug a lot less expensively? AND have it match my walls and afghan perfectly? Plus, since the rug is going on a carpeted floor, I won’t have to worry about it sliding around as it would on hard wood.

So I did some research online trying to determine how much yarn I would need to make a rug that was the size I want. I found a site which showed the average amount of yarn needed per square inch of each yarn weight. I have no idea how accurate that is, but I needed a place to start. Next I created a spreadsheet to help me do the math and I plugged in my desired size – 7 ft by 5 ft – and converted it to the number of yards of yarn I needed. It should be 2100 yards if my math is correct. I found that I could get a 100% wool yarn (not superwash) from Knit Picks (Wool of the Andes) and the whole price of the project would be less than $100. So, I ordered the yarn and I’m going to give it a try.

I plan to knit the rug in strips of stockinette and then graft the strips together. This is mostly because I don’t have any 5 foot long knitting needles. I’ll knit it to 6 ft x 4 ft and graft it together, then I’ll knit or crochet a border around the entire thing which will be first light grey and then purple. Hopefully it will look great and wear well. I guess if it doesn’t I can always use it as another afghan!

One concern which my Mom broached – what if someone walks on it in high heels? That’s not something that happens often in my house but I’m hoping if it does it won’t be a problem. I guess it will depend on the heels! I had thought that if I felt the yarn it won’t be an issue. But then the rug will have to be even bigger to allow for shrinkage so… no.

I have a few other projects to finish up before I get started on the rug, but I just received the yarn today (16 skeins of blackberry and 3 of silver). I’ll let you all know how it goes. I may even post a pattern at some point in the future.

What do you think? Will it work?

Angora Fingerless Mitts

A while ago, I went to a fiber show and picked up 100 yards of hand spun fingering weight angora. I asked the seller what I could reasonably make with such a small quantity and she said fingerless mitts. But when I went online, all the patterns called for more than 100 yards. Plus, I really wanted to use up as much of the yarn as possible. So, I wrote my own pattern and shared it with a friend.

Then, in September, I went to another fiber show and got some more angora. I had several people ask me what I planned to make with it and express an interest in the pattern when I told them. So I have written the pattern and its on Ravelry. The pattern is very simple because Angora really blooms after you wear it a few times (gets fuzzier), so any really complex pattern would be lost.

What do you think of my fingerless mitts?