PATTERN: Woven Hot Pad / Trivet

About a month ago I was looking for patterns to make pretty, functional heat protection for our brand new, beautiful blackwood dining table at the lake house.  I was settling in my mind on finding something that was double layered for extra heat protection, and possibly some kind of woven pattern. 

A lovely friend linked to Atty's blog where she makes a braided/woven crochet stool cover, and in a later post a pattern for an afghan square using the same technique. I was hooked! So, I took inspiration from Atty's ideas, and changed it (of course) to suit my, er, more quick and dirty method of crocheting. Here is my pattern for a Woven Heat Pad / Trivet, with due credit to Atty for the inspiration :) 

You can also visit the Ravelry page for this pattern to save it to your queue or favourites for later!

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PATTERN : WOVEN HEAT PAD / TRIVET

Inspired by Atty of http://atty-s.blogspot.nl/

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MATERIALS:

50g each of two colours 8 ply cotton (or a double strand of 4 ply cotton)

3.5mm hook

Darning needle

In the photo tutorial below, Colour A is Pink, and Colour B is Black.

STRIPS:

Start with 30 Chainless Foundation dc. 

If you're not confident with chainless foundations, either check out my tutorial (for hdc, but you can easily do dc instead) or do 32 chain, dc into 3rd chain from hook, dc into each chain (30 dc).

3 ch, turn. dc into each dc (30 dc). Make sure your first dc is in your last dc from the previous row - the 3ch does not count as a dc. Pull through end and cut yarn. 

Repeats Steps 1 and 2 until you have 12 strips - 6 in colour A and 6 in Colour B. Weave in all your ends.

JOINING

Now to start putting it together! First, have a look at the ends of each strip. You need to get 5 sc into the end of each strip, and these arrows show you where you should be sticking your hook in :P 

Pick up a strip of colour A, and one of colour B. Place them perpendicular to one another, crossing over in the corner. sc through the corner of both strips.

Now, continue on, making sure you get 5sc (matching up with the first 5 dc of colour A and the 5 spots at the end of strip in colour B as shown above). 

See how colour B strip is on the front of your colour A strip? The next colour B strip is going to be attached to the BACK of the colour A strip.

Keep working along, 5sc in each strip, alternating your colour B strips from front to back. At each corner, do 3 sc into the corner stitch instead of 1 :) 

When you get around the corner, continue adding strips, this time of colour A. Make sure you alternate attaching them on the front or back. Don't worry about weaving the strips together at this point - just get them all joined!

Now is when the weaving comes in. 

As you work your way along the long edge of colour A (on the left hand side of the above picture), continue using the same method - 5sc in each added strip, alternating front and back.

Turn the corner again with 3sc and work your way along the bottom, locking the colour A strips into position. In the final corner, do two more sc where you did your sc to start. Slip stitch into that first sc, and it should look like this:

Now, you just need to add whatever border you like! The sky is the limit for borders, do whatever you like :) I did a simple *hdc, ch1, sk1* border on this one, to match the boxy shapes of the woven trivet.

But, you could do shells!

Or even just another row of sc all the way around to finish it off :)

I really enjoyed making these heat pads, and I think they will be VERY useful for the new house at the lake! 

As always, if anything doesn't make sense just leave a comment or message me through our Facebook page. I am here to help you, and this pattern hasn't been tested by anyone other than me!

Let me know if you try making it - I'd love to see your creations and post them on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/crochetbetweenworlds 

WIP Wednesday - Projects update

Hello everyone! 

Wow, what a birthday week! Thank you to everyone who read, participated, entered the giveaway, commented and followed our little blog :) We have a great time writing it for you!

Today I'm just doing a quick update on my current works in progress (WIPs) as it has been a crazy week around here. Not only was it blog birthday week, but... 

Over the long weekend we went up and stayed at the new house at Lake Macquarie for the first time. It was amazing and awesome, and I can't wait for it to be properly finished so I can unpack the kitchen properly ;) My sister has done an amazing job with the design of the house, particularly the interior features like this tiled wall:

Plus the view from the balcony is pretty good ;)

Then, Kiah ended up in hospital last Tuesday having his appendix out! It was caught early which is good, but still required nearly 3 days in hospital, and lots of running around and helping from me. He is still very sore, but the three little holes in his belly seem to be healing up nicely. 

As a result, I am pretty much completely exhausted, which has really slowed down the crochet production (and everything else, but that's less important). Fortunately my parents are back from their conference now, so they are helping with shopping and driving, and the wonderful Beccy, our housemate is helping with housekeeping. Couldn't do it without you all! 

On the good news front, I received my Stylecraft Special DK Packs from Deramores. How will I ever use any other acrylic 8ply again!? This yarn is incredible, and the price I can get from Deramores is about $2.80/100g - just about cheaper than any low quality yarn I can get here. I have started using one colour pack already (see Project 2 below), but I am still musing and plotting over how to make something amazing with the other one.  

Because my brain has been all over the place, my WIPs have been all over the place too. Usually I don't like having more than one or two WIPs as it gets me all fuddled, but these are special times.

Project 1 (a, b, c, d,... so many animals)

Animal orders - so far I have pieces for two candy hippos, one blue and yellow stegosaurus and one black and red dragon! The dragon pieces in particular are very dramatic - I think he's going to be one amazing beastie when put together :) Since I enjoy joining more than I enjoy making the little African Flowers, I am collecting up little baggie sets to relax and join later! 

Project 2

Cosmos Fields Shawl, pattern by Zooty Owl. I am loving this yarn, and these colours! Reminds me of lavender fields in Provence :) It is for our housemate Beccy to keep at work for when she gets chilly about the shoulders. The pink workbasket (for details go here) is just the perfect size for this project! 

Project 3

I was inspired by Atty's Woven Crochet Block to create this prototype heat pad for the new house, to protect the tables from hot saucepans and trays. Maybe next week I'll write up how I did it, so you can have a try too! Or maybe the week after. 

(excuse the ends not tucked in yet...)

What are you working on this week?

Round and round in circles - Mandala time!

I've been a little bit naughty today - supposed to be working on the order list, and hunting down kitchen equipment for the new house at the lake, testing a pattern for a friend... but instead all I wanted to do is play with my new cotton supplies that arrived yesterday! 

It's Red Heart Miami, 4 ply 100% cotton, from loveknitting.com. Such vibrant colours and reasonable prices! 

This colourful cotton is to make pretty and useful coasters and heat mats for the house my parents are building at Lake Macquarie. My mission sent me hunting for good coaster patterns that show off the lovely colours, while also being the right size and shape. It took me ages to find one that I actually liked, and when I tried the pattern, I just couldn't get it to look neat :( 

But then... hunting through Zooty Owl's blog for other things, I saw some of the amazing mandalas she has designed. I haven't really been interested in mandalas before - I like the things I make to be practical, useful or good to cuddle, and the contexts I had seen mandalas in before was as art or just being beautiful. Mandalas are round though - could they make good coasters and heat mats? 

Absolutely!! Above is Zooty Owl's Sunny Flower Mini Mandala in two sizes - 10.5cm for coasters, and 21cm for heat mats. The coasters are made with a 1.5mm hook and one strand of the cotton yarn, and the heat mats are made with a 3.5mm hook and two strands of the yarn. I also washed and blocked the heat mat to make it sit nice and even :) 

Sadly, as you can see in the photo above, the orange dye ran a little bit being washed and ironed. I am a bit reluctant to wash the pink yarn now. Any ideas on how to stop the colour running in the finished piece?

I'm really looking forward to making a whole stack of the little coasters and some more heat mats in this pattern. Plus, I discovered Zooty Owl has a table runner pattern using the same mandala! House decoration solved :D 

Have you ever tried making mandalas? What have you used them for?