The other day our temperature fell to almost freezing. They predicted sleet for us, but we only got rain, light rain, at that. We haven’t had a day of freezing rain or snow yet this winter. It has been chilly, though. The cats, of course, know how to handle that. They huddle. They were on their well-used pillow the other night. I got tickled when I saw Lucky in this vulnerable position right in front of Charming. She barely noticed, and he was so relaxed, he didn’t care. Even the flash didn’t bother him. Life is so hard for kitties.
Diagonal Potholder–Knitted
In going through some of the things I got from my Mother’s estate, I found a crocheted potholder made of acrylic that was nice and thick. I also found a much larger square made exactly like this in crochet for a hot mat. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more boring than to do that much single or double crochet. I wondered if there was a way to knit it, so I devised a way to do it. (This may have been done a million times before, but I couldn’t find a pattern for it on the net, so I’ll give you my pattern here.) If you stumbled across this site by accident and would like to crochet one, here are the instructions for that.
Here’s the original crocheted potholder. Now, acrylic would be terrible for a potholder as it would melt when heated enough. If you look on the far edge of this photo, you’ll see some hardened light colored bits of acrylic that have gotten too hot in use. I’d rather mine be made of kitchen cotton. So that’s what I used on my knitted ones.
I’ve been working on a pattern for them, and I thought I’d show you what I devised. I used a #7 circular needle, and I cast on about 90 stitches for the size I wanted. You’ll adapt the size according to the pattern you choose to use on it. On the blue and white one below, I just used stockinette stitch, so the count was 90 stitches, and it made a nice sized potholder, about 7-7.5″ square. By the way, as you stitch this potholder, you will gain experience, if you need it, in working with two circular needles at one time, learn one method of getting stitches on two cable needles to knit at the same time, and practice grafting (or doing Kitchener stitches). If you use a simple pattern, you can knit round and round this without counting rows at all. End it off when your knitted length is about half the width of what you have on one needle. You don’t even need a measuring tape. It makes great pickup work.
Splitting the Stitches to Two Needles
Once I had all the 90 stitches on the circular needle, I moved every other stitch off onto a second circular needle of the same size. Most of you can do this, I’m sure, but for beginners, here’s how. This is really easy to do. For the stitches that will stay on the original needle, just use the other end of that same needle to pick up those stitches. Put the alternate stitches on the second needle. You will wind up with half the stitches on each needle, and the stitches will alternate from one needle to another. Basically, you will be knitting a huge pocket or “toe,” like on a sock.
Knitting with Two Needles
Now, begin to knit around the stitches. If you aren’t familiar with knitting with two needles, just remember to always knit with one needle at a time. You will never knit with the points of two different needles at the same time while in the rounds. It’s a good idea, if you can, to use two differently colored needles. That makes it a little easier to keep up with which needle is active at any one time. When you finish knitting the stitches on the first needle, pick up the second needle, and knit those stitches off with the other end of that same needle. Be sure to pull the first stitch of the needle up snug to the last stitch of the previous needle so that there won’t be a gap in the work. Continue to go around and around the work. As you go, you’ll soon see that you are forming a pocket or “toe.” (By the way, some of you who have done two color knitting on socks will worry about how to make the rounds round instead of a spiral. This does make a spiral, but I figure that on a simple potholder there is no need to get too complicated. Just keep knitting around, and you’ll see that it works out fine.)
Rearranging the Stitches
If you want a square potholder, when you have a knitted length equal to half of the width of the cast on row on one needle, you are ready to end the potholder. You don’t need a measuring tape. Just fold the work at one of the starting corners and lay the length you’ve knitted against the cast on row. You can eyeball the width well enough to see if you’re half way or not. If you want a rectangular potholder, then you need to knit a length that is more than half the width of the cast on row or less.
Now, before you are ready to end the potholder, you need to move some of the stitches around. Mark the middle of the stitches on each needle. Now, knit just to the first middle marker and move the rest of the stitches around so that the stitches from one marker to the other is on one needle, and the remaining stitches are on the other. You can remove the markers once this is done. Each needle will have half the stitches again, but this time the corners on the cast on row are in the center of the stitch count for each needle instead of at the ends of each needle. Don’t forget this step, or you’ll wind up with a long rectangle that won’t be a bit of good for a potholder. Somewhere about now, you need to finish off your cast on yarn end. Just open the “pocket” of your work and weave the end into the work inside the pocket so that it’s invisible from the outside. Cut off the tail, and that’s done.
Finishing the Potholder
Now you are ready to graft the two sides together. If you need instructions on how to do this, here is a wonderful video to show you how it’s done. Look for Kitchener Stitch. To do this, you will need to cut your yarn. Allow about an inch for each stitch you will graft, and if you want to do a loop afterwards, you might want to leave an additional 20 inches or so. That should give you plenty of yarn to work with.
Starting at the ending place for your knitting, begin grafting the stitches off the two needles. This takes a little time, but it is very rewarding. Now, when you have finished, weave the end into the fabric of the potholder, and cut your thread. If you like a loop on your potholder, you can do that before you end off the yarn. Use whatever method you like for the loop. You can crochet a chain or you can do a two stitch idiot cord on double pointed needles. When you finish, you may want to gently press the potholder to flatten it well.
Variegated Blue and White Potholder
Here is my variegated blue potholder. By the way, this is perfectly square, but I took the photo at an angle, and it looks a bit warped. This shows the double sided pot holder with the cast on edge in the center of the pot holder going along the diagonal from lower left to upper right. Notice how the stripes are oriented with regard to the loop and the center cast on line on the potholder. The stripes are parallel to the cast on edge on this side.
This is the other side, the cast off side or grafted side. The grafted seam lies on a diagonal from the loop to the corner opposite it. If you’ve done the grafting right, you should have an almost invisible seam here. Notice again how the stripes lie with regard to the grafted seam and the loop. Again the seam is parallel to the stripes, but the stripes seem to originate at the point where the loop is. If you could see through the potholder, you’d see that the cast on edge and the grafted seam actually are at right angles to one another. If you flip the potholder over, you’ll see that the stripes change direction from one side of the potholder to another.
Red Potholder with Pattern
Now, here is the red potholder I knitted with a simple pattern on 90 stitches on #7 needles. I started out *k2, P3 all around both sides, and when I did three rows like that, I changed and did P2, K3 for three rows and repeated from *. Some of these patterns go over the transition point from one needle to another, but I just let it happen and kept going. Here are a couple of photos to show you how this looks on two needles in the process of knitting.
In this photo, you can see the cast on row at the bottom of the work and the needles in the opposite side where I’m working. I’m using two differently colored needles so that it’s easier to know when the end of the row comes around.
In this photo, you can see that the knitting forms a pocket of sorts. Eventually, the two corners will be on a diagonal from one another in the finished potholder.
This is the finished potholder, showing the cast on side. As you can see, the cast on edge is quite visible, and I don’t think I like it. If it doesn’t bother you, don’t worry about it. In the blue and white potholder, the colors disguised this, and it wasn’t as noticeable. So if you don’t want to mess with correcting this as I show you later, just use a variegated yarn, and your secret is safe. I won’t tell.
This is the cast off side where I did the grafting. Now, I’m not going to claim my grafting is letter perfect. It can stand some work, and that’s one reason why I’m doing these. They give me some practice in grafting. However, I like this side much better than the one with the visible cast on.
You can actually make a visible grafting if you wish. It does make the two sides more nearly alike. You’d have the center stripe down both sides that way. You do the grafting the other way around. Instead of k, p on the front needle and p, k on the back needle, you do p, k on the front needle and k, p on the back needle. I actually tried this, but I decided I didn’t like it.
You will notice that I did use some patterning. There are about eleven rows of stockinette after the cast on row and before the grafting row. Now, you don’t need to do just a strip of pattern if you don’t want to. That’s just what I wanted to do. You may want to make an all over pattern. Just keep in mind how you will need to end the potholder when it comes to the grafting of the work.
Final Potholder
Finally, I did a third potholder, still experimenting. For this one, I used a zig zag pattern, Welting Fantastic, p. 143, from Barbara Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns. Since the pattern repeat is eleven stitches, I chose to cast on 88 stitches to begin. Now that it’s done, I think I should have cast on 99 stitches. The resulting potholder is about 6.5″ square, and I really like mine a little larger than that. So do what you will for that. The only difference in this potholder and the red one, other than the pattern, is the cast on, and the idiot cord loop. The cast on was the Figure Eight Cast On which is normally used for socks, and can be found here. (Thank goodness, Knitty has these wonderful teaching aids. Saves me a lot of work.) I followed these instructions, and cast on 44 stitches on each of two #7 circular needles at the same time. Then I started right in on the pattern from Barbara Walker. It starts with five rows of stockinette, so I also ended it that way.
This is the cast on side. You’ll notice there is no ridge.
This is the grafted side.
Alternate Potholder
There is still another potholder you can make on two circular needles that is much easier, actually than this or double knitting. You cast on double the number of stitches you need for any dishcloth pattern that is knitted straight and which does not have a lace pattern. You should also have no fancy corners, etc.; separate the stitches onto two circular needles. Knit the stitches in a circle as we did on these potholders or as you would a sock. Instead of stopping when you get half the length of the cast on row, you will continue to the end of the dishcloth pattern. Then just bind off the two sides together. For this type of potholder, you could even use a normal cast on and bind off–no need to hide them as they will come at the top and bottom of the potholder and wouldn’t be felt by the user.
Tips for Knitting Potholders
You can use any pattern that pleases you as long as it doesn’t have lace in it. The holes would defeat the purpose of the potholder, after all. Any of the solid designs or those that have cables on them or layers of stitches would work fine as long as it would be functional in a potholder. Be sure to check the repeat size of your design, and allow for that in the number of stitches you cast on. You may want to knit a few rows of stockinette stitch at the start of the potholder so that you can end off in stockinette stitch–it’s easier to graft stockinette stitch together.
Another good source for grafting information, if you need it, is found here.
I’d love to see your potholders if you use this pattern and see how you vary it.