Waste Not, Want Not

Day 110: "Waste not, want not," or as my grandmother used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," so I'm using up whatever I can salvage from my weaving thrums to make potholders. Since I weave almost exclusively with 8/2 cotton, this is an ideal solution. It must be said, however, that my grandmother was English. My Scottish genes came from my grandfather whose mother, so the story goes, had a dalliance with a McLeod outside her marriage. My knowledge of the backstory ends there, but the frugal DNA runs strong. That said, my grandmother was notorious for using short bits of crochet thread as centers for granny squares, even shorter than the weaving thrums I've used here.

This double-thick pattern is about as simple as it gets in crochet (both sides of one potholder are shown here). Determine the diagonal length you want for your potholder and make an equivalent chain in the fiber of your choice. Cotton insulates your hand against heat quite well (I used a double strand of 8/2 with a 2.0 mm hook). Add an extra inch, ending with an odd number of chains. Sc in the second chain from the hook, and in each subsequent chain. Without turning, sc in the opposite side of the chain until you're back to your starting point (example: I started with 71 sc, which is a nice multiple of 10 plus 1). Crocheting down both sides of the chain gave me 140 sc for the round when I got back to my starting point.) Now without turning, single-crochet half as many rows as you had chains (for me, that was 35). You'll soon see that this begins to form a bag with the chain row at its bottom. When complete, fold the bag, pulling out the closed corners. The opposite corners will be open. Now you'll need to crochet a half row (roughly) to reach an open corner. Once there, make a chain for the hanger. Sc back along the hanger chain, join to the body of the bag and fasten off, leaving a long tail. Use the tail to ladder-stitch the open diagonal (the last sc row made). You're done!

HIndsight: I made this one a little small, having forgotten to allow for the inevitable shrinkage in washing and drying. I should have allowed a few extra stitches in the starting chain to compensate. Not to worry! I still have a bagful of thrums.