Knitted potholders!
Oct. 25th, 2019 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI mentioned here a while ago that I had made knitted potholders for my friend Lala whereupon my mom was all Me Likey, WHERE ARE MINE??. *sigh* So I made her some. I'd actually been in the process of making them before she'd gotten all demand-y but now she's going to think that demanding is how shit gets done 'round here. Er. No.
Knitted potholders because I do not generally like commercial potholders.
The shiny grey fabric used in commercial potholders as the "pot-facing" surface is metallic and weird. I do not like it. This is an aesthetic objection, but still. I do not like it. Metallic fabrics are an abomination unto Nuggan.
Commercial potholders are never big enough or thick enough for me. I am doing things like moving around honking big cast iron pots and enameled cast iron pots and that stuff has serious heft, both thermally and gravitically. I want quite thick, sturdy potholders that are big enough for my whole hand to be on and not have to worry about slippage. (I have fairly large hands for a chick.)
Commercial potholders frequently use polyesters which MELT and I can't even. I just can't. I mean, who among us has never left a hotpad or potholder or dishtowel in contact with a red-hot element in the oven or on the stovetop? Bueller? Fine. I have. I am a sloppy cook. A GOOD cook, but not a neat one. Trust me, cotton burns at low temps and can be flapped out easily. Polyester MELTS (burn danger from flying droplets of melty polyester) and it burns at a higher, petroleum-enabled temperature and it does not flap out so easily. Also it smells like burning plastic. Ew.
The potholders I make are constructed of cotton. I buy the cotton at (typically) WalMart in their ever-shrinking handicrafts department. Currently they sell Sugar 'N Cream but I also use Peaches 'N Creme (it kills me every time I have to write Creme, let me just share that with you) bought via mail order if I need a color in which WalMart is deficient. Both of these are cheap-ass brands for old ladies of the rural persuasion to make "dishcloths" out of. I do not, as it happens, feel that "dishcloths" of cotton are good for shit compared to a fine 3M ScotchBrite Green Scrubbie Thing. Cotton dishcloths fairly rapidly smell weird as hell and get slimy in a modality that I feel is bacteria-laden unless they are washed WAY more often than I am prone to washing them. I am not made for cotton dishcloths. (There is a free, twee pattern for cotton dishcloths inside the 'N Cream/Creme ball bands.) But anyway,that's where I get the yarn. I buy the white in a big honking cone of the shit and the colors in balls. I use way more white than colors.
There is not, as it happens, a pattern for potholders. I make them up as I go. I do not typically do anything super-difficult because I am usually watching WWII documentaries on YouTube while knitting and can't be arsed to follow a chart while I am learning about the Siege of Stalingrad or the Battle of Midway or Rommel in the desert or the reconstruction of Germany after the war or whatever. (The WWII videos are supplementary material to improve my understanding of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which is my bedtime reading at the moment. WWII is a current enthusiasm for me, about which I am currently enthused. I may be unenthused at some later date, but for right now? Let's watch some WWII shit on YouTube.)
The potholders are knitted in the round because I have done seamed ones in the past and four fucking seams is too many. Knitted in the round, there are only two seams (top and bottom) and I like that better.
The potholders are about 7 1/2 inches on a side, which is kind of big for potholders. I like, as I've mentioned, fairly robust potholders. There are 108 stitches in a round and I knit them on... what appears to be a size 3 circular needle. I knit them until they come out mostly-square. I doubt they are exactly square but they're square-ish.
Patterns for mom's were GOING to be diamonds chained together. I had one of them cast on and started before Mom was all "MINEMINEMINE" like some fucking Nemo seagull about the checkerboard I'd done for Lala. So, she gets fraternal potholders -- one diamonds chained and one checkerboard. The odds for fraternal potholders are actually pretty good even if I'm not pissy because I get bored after I've made one of a kind. (The way I do socks is to do both of them at one time.)
There is some rippling in the checkerboard because it is prone to having the floats too tight. I blocked it hard and it still ripples. I dunno. Maybe I need more practice. The diamonds are not at all ripply.
Once the potholders are deemed "square-ish" by my super-classy Fold It Diagonal method of checking, I cast off and seam the top and bottom sides together using a big old yarn needle with a blunt tip.
The pattern for the diamonds is 1-5-1-5-1-5 for two rows, 3-3-3-3-3 for two rows, and then 5-1-5-1 for two rows, repeat.
The pattern for the checkerboard is 3-3-3-3- for three rows and then OPPOSITE COLORS 3-3-3-3 for three rows. It's a checkerboard. Make a checkerboard. I don't know how to explain this in more detail.
For all of these, I hold the colored yarn in my left hand and the white yarn in my right hand. (It looks like this except I only wrap the indices once and not twice like the lady in the video.) This doesn't probably matter for this sort of balanced pattern, but yarn dominance DOES matter for some other patterns. For the way I knit, in two-handed colorwork, the left hand should hold the "foreground" color. Your mileage as a knitter may vary on yarn dominance, so feel free to experiment and stuff.
Knitted potholders because I do not generally like commercial potholders.
The shiny grey fabric used in commercial potholders as the "pot-facing" surface is metallic and weird. I do not like it. This is an aesthetic objection, but still. I do not like it. Metallic fabrics are an abomination unto Nuggan.
Commercial potholders are never big enough or thick enough for me. I am doing things like moving around honking big cast iron pots and enameled cast iron pots and that stuff has serious heft, both thermally and gravitically. I want quite thick, sturdy potholders that are big enough for my whole hand to be on and not have to worry about slippage. (I have fairly large hands for a chick.)
Commercial potholders frequently use polyesters which MELT and I can't even. I just can't. I mean, who among us has never left a hotpad or potholder or dishtowel in contact with a red-hot element in the oven or on the stovetop? Bueller? Fine. I have. I am a sloppy cook. A GOOD cook, but not a neat one. Trust me, cotton burns at low temps and can be flapped out easily. Polyester MELTS (burn danger from flying droplets of melty polyester) and it burns at a higher, petroleum-enabled temperature and it does not flap out so easily. Also it smells like burning plastic. Ew.
The potholders I make are constructed of cotton. I buy the cotton at (typically) WalMart in their ever-shrinking handicrafts department. Currently they sell Sugar 'N Cream but I also use Peaches 'N Creme (it kills me every time I have to write Creme, let me just share that with you) bought via mail order if I need a color in which WalMart is deficient. Both of these are cheap-ass brands for old ladies of the rural persuasion to make "dishcloths" out of. I do not, as it happens, feel that "dishcloths" of cotton are good for shit compared to a fine 3M ScotchBrite Green Scrubbie Thing. Cotton dishcloths fairly rapidly smell weird as hell and get slimy in a modality that I feel is bacteria-laden unless they are washed WAY more often than I am prone to washing them. I am not made for cotton dishcloths. (There is a free, twee pattern for cotton dishcloths inside the 'N Cream/Creme ball bands.) But anyway,that's where I get the yarn. I buy the white in a big honking cone of the shit and the colors in balls. I use way more white than colors.
There is not, as it happens, a pattern for potholders. I make them up as I go. I do not typically do anything super-difficult because I am usually watching WWII documentaries on YouTube while knitting and can't be arsed to follow a chart while I am learning about the Siege of Stalingrad or the Battle of Midway or Rommel in the desert or the reconstruction of Germany after the war or whatever. (The WWII videos are supplementary material to improve my understanding of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which is my bedtime reading at the moment. WWII is a current enthusiasm for me, about which I am currently enthused. I may be unenthused at some later date, but for right now? Let's watch some WWII shit on YouTube.)
The potholders are knitted in the round because I have done seamed ones in the past and four fucking seams is too many. Knitted in the round, there are only two seams (top and bottom) and I like that better.
The potholders are about 7 1/2 inches on a side, which is kind of big for potholders. I like, as I've mentioned, fairly robust potholders. There are 108 stitches in a round and I knit them on... what appears to be a size 3 circular needle. I knit them until they come out mostly-square. I doubt they are exactly square but they're square-ish.
Patterns for mom's were GOING to be diamonds chained together. I had one of them cast on and started before Mom was all "MINEMINEMINE" like some fucking Nemo seagull about the checkerboard I'd done for Lala. So, she gets fraternal potholders -- one diamonds chained and one checkerboard. The odds for fraternal potholders are actually pretty good even if I'm not pissy because I get bored after I've made one of a kind. (The way I do socks is to do both of them at one time.)
There is some rippling in the checkerboard because it is prone to having the floats too tight. I blocked it hard and it still ripples. I dunno. Maybe I need more practice. The diamonds are not at all ripply.
Once the potholders are deemed "square-ish" by my super-classy Fold It Diagonal method of checking, I cast off and seam the top and bottom sides together using a big old yarn needle with a blunt tip.
The pattern for the diamonds is 1-5-1-5-1-5 for two rows, 3-3-3-3-3 for two rows, and then 5-1-5-1 for two rows, repeat.
The pattern for the checkerboard is 3-3-3-3- for three rows and then OPPOSITE COLORS 3-3-3-3 for three rows. It's a checkerboard. Make a checkerboard. I don't know how to explain this in more detail.
For all of these, I hold the colored yarn in my left hand and the white yarn in my right hand. (It looks like this except I only wrap the indices once and not twice like the lady in the video.) This doesn't probably matter for this sort of balanced pattern, but yarn dominance DOES matter for some other patterns. For the way I knit, in two-handed colorwork, the left hand should hold the "foreground" color. Your mileage as a knitter may vary on yarn dominance, so feel free to experiment and stuff.
