My apologies to any of you who caught this post’s short “sneak preview” on Wednesday morning. I was supposed to have moved it ahead one notch to today when I added the post about having lunch with Anastacia. Oops. I hope you didn’t feel too disappointed when you saw its title appear on your reader again today.
And now we return to our regular programming. . .
We like our new bathmat so much I’ve decided to knit a t-shirt rug for our kitchen too. I want one about the same size as the plain burgundy mat we have in front of the sink now, 22″ x 40″.
In hopes of making a kitchen rug that’s denser than the bathmat, one that will be comfortable to stand on for long stretches while cooking, canning. . . or making crayons, I thought I’d experiment with knitting wider t-shirt strips, 3/4″ instead of 1/2″, but still on the #17 needles.
I cast-on 60 stitches and knit.
Once my rug sample was big enough, DH and I took turns standing and
stomping on it make sure we like the rug’s ‘feel’. It’s pretty neat to custom-knit rug fabric!! lol.
My giant swatch also helped me figure out how many t-shirts I need for a densely knitted 22″ x 40″ kitchen rug.
I was able to knit 2 1/2″ of rug (light strip across bottom of swatch) from the single looong spiraling 3/4″ wide strip I cut from the body, armhole to hem, of one size Large tee-shirt.
This means I need at least sixteen size Large t-shirts (40″ rug ÷ 2.5″ per shirt = 16 shirts) for our rug.
Most of the tees in my “country colors collection”, chosen to coordinate with the oriental rug in our dining room, are at least XLs (DH’s size before he lost weight) and the burgundy and two navy ones that I just got at Sal’s (50¢ each) are XXLs, so I think this dozen shirts will probably be enough. If I have to, I can happy with a 36″ long kitchen rug, although I’d prefer 40.
As you see, I’ve already spiral-cut four tees. I’m in a hurry to start my kitchen rug!
THIS IS SOOOOO VERY COOL…CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT POST!!
HAHahaha – I think you might be more excited about my new kitchen rug than we are!!
Beware, I don’t knit anywhere near as fast as I crochet. . . this project is going to take awhile.
Look at how pretty your colors are for your new rug! And I can personally attest to how pretty (and smooshy) the first one is in person!
Thank You. Do you think it’s rather odd that my DH happens to wear all the colors in our dining room rug? lol.
And how is your t-shirt rug – have you cast-on?
A note to the rest of my readers. . . I gave Anastacia the leftover tarn from the t-shirt bathmat.