Guest post from our little brother, Jordan -- Memoirs of a Gigolo

Well of course- what would YOU call a male hooker?

Anyway, I set out to make a rag rug for Grandpa Chuck as a Christmas gift.  I figure the last thing he needs is another gadget or gewgaw he can't even see, but I can at least give him something comfy to stand on while he blindly brews coffee.  Happy Holidays from Dr. Scholl, or something like that.

I ripped the edging hems off of two sheets, one red and one pale green, measured 3" intervals all down one side, then ripped each measure down the length of the sheet to within an inch of the opposite side.

The result looked like one of those heavy, sloppy brushes you see in drive-through car washes.  Once this was complete, I tore each of these 3" strips in half starting from the 'spine' and ending within an inch of the free end.  This created one long serpentine of 'yarn' from the entire sheet.  Trying to keep it all together, I could imagine what it must be like trying to wrestle a jellyfish and its unholy mass of tentacles and slaw.

I say- tearing a sheet apart isn't exactly as impressive as ripping the Denver Metro phone book in half, but by the end of it my arms were tired!  Assuming standard sizes for sheets (green was a king, red a queen), an inch hem removed from both dimensions, and the inch reserved for continuity, I calculate that I ripped 15,226 inches of fabric.  That's 1,269 feet or nearly a quarter mile!  Hulk Hogan thinks he's a badass because he rips one T-shirt down its 2 foot length.  Try ruining 600 shirts in a row, Mr. Tough-Guy, then see if you can still full-nelson the Macho Man.  Betcha can't, homeskillet.

What a huge pile of sheet.

Once the sheets were rendered to a mountain of spaghetti, I rolled each into a yarn ball for easy wrangling during the crochet process.  Let it be said that for a dude to crochet it requires big balls.  Here they are next to a full size claw hammer for reference.

I set out to make a simple round rug for Gpa, starting with a chain of six and adding six each row, but before I knew it I had a base of seven knots and was mysteriously adding one extra knot each round.  I guess I forgot how to end a row and begin a new one when crocheting discrete circular rounds.  Halfway through I remembered how it's supposed to go, but I just let it ride and kept adding seven knots per row.

As the rug grew in size the ball-in-use kept yapping around my feet like a Yorkshire terrier.  I had fun kicking it across the room occasionally, but it would simply return and start nipping at my ankles again.  It reminded me of the time in high school when we tied a few shirts into a ball, dunked it in diesel, and played fireball soccer.  So much fun!  The town of Foresthill, CA dodged a burn-to-the-ground bullet that night.

Kittens run in fear of these oversized yarn balls.

Halfway through the rug I realized I might have enough stock for two rugs, so I did some quick calculations.  My scale said I had 875 grams left of the green ball, 634g of the red and 346g of rug already made for 1855 total grams of stock.  I had a circular rug 8" in radius, so pi-r-squared said I had 254 square inches of rug at 1.362g/square inch.  927g of stock (half of the total) would then allow for a 14" radius rug, which is a good size.  Using all the stock for one rug would make a 20" radius rug, which is huge- Gpa's condo isn't exactly the largest domicile in existence.  Two rugs it is!

For the second rug I decided to employ the hexagonal method, which is the same as crocheting in a circle except you add the stitches in the same place every time.  Eventually this creates corners.  I presume that if you added enough rows in this manner (like hundreds) it would eventually take on a snowflake shape with the corners stretching out further than the sides.  As it was, I barely had enough rows to form a definite hexagon, but give me a break-I was running out of stock quickly.

Near the end I finished the last red row with only about 2 feet of extra length.  This was almost as satisfying as arbitrarily grabbing the exact number of hangers required for the load of shirts coming out of the dryer.

So there they are, two freshies to add to the memory vault.  The lighting, when combined with an iPad camera and an apathetic attitude towards photography in general, makes the green look a little sickly.  In person it is a fine color combination anyone would take home to mother.  Which is, incidentally, exactly what I'm going to do.  The hexagon is for Ma.

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Note from Niki -- GOOD LORD, I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THE FIREBALL SOCCER GAME!  And I find it all kinds of hilarious that a claw hammer was used for scale while documenting a crochet project.  My brother is a complete goofball -- you would never know from reading this that he was a varsity wrestler in high school.  And how many chemists crochet rag rugs in their spare time?  Not many, I'd bet.  

Jordan's Rag Rugs

Recently, Jordan (the Roonie Ranchers' little brother) found himself with some time on his hands, and he once again picked up a crochet hook.  I like to think I inspired him with my amigurumi shenanigans, but it's probably more likely that the downtime simply triggered his Evans kid craftiness into action.  He saw a cool rag rug in my parents' house and decided to see if he could crochet one himself.  During the creation process, Jordan wrote me a couple of e-mails about what he was doing, so I stole his own words to describe the two crocheted rag rugs he ended up making.  I think they turned out fabulous!!!!!

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OK, so we went to a Goodwill and bought four sheets for 15 bucks, then to a Hobby Lobby where I purchased a Q hook for a couple more. I think a P hook would have been ideal, but the rug is shaping up just fine (and a little quicker) with the huge Q.

I have been ripping off 4" wide strips of the fabric, then ripping that in half for 99% of its length for a 2" wide strip that is twice as long as the sheet was. I just chained an arbitrary amount and then started single crochets in an oval pattern, adding knots on the ends whenever I thought it necessary. I didn't place any additional knots along the length, and the rug has started to take on a peanut shape, so now I'm rectifying that by adding another knot or two each time I'm on a straight side. A peanut shaped rug would actually be pretty cool, now that I think about it.

To join strands of fabric, I cut a 1/2" slit near the end of the current strand, then threaded the new strand into it and folded about 4" back in the direction of the crochet, and the 4" tail is simply getting knotted in the mix like usual.

It's over a half inch thick, and pretty soft. I'm going to have to figure out a way to hide some of the ends of strands that are sticking out, because I didn't have my color-switching technique set before I started the rug. I'm thinking of just jamming the extra bits into a knot and securing them with a few small stitches of needle and thread.

The color scheme was dictated by whatever shlop I could find at the Goodwill. I think I might scavenge some garage and estate sales for a while in the hopes of building an arsenal of colors, because I plan to make a few more of these rugs. Hardwood floors seem to be all the rage in Texas, and my tootsies will be bruised if I don't take action!

The finished product:

Here is Jordan's post-mortem analysis:

A few hard lessons I would like to impart if I may be so bold:

I used a Q hook, which was too big.  It made for quick progress, but the knots are too large and the texture is a bit lumpy.  The lumpiness makes for discomfort under your feet.  This couldn't be a rug for a place that requires prolonged standing, like in front of the kitchen or bathroom sink.  It would be better suited for a doorway.

I didn't use any in-the-round pattern, so my oval became somewhat amoeboid.  The reshaping process was hard fought to get it back into a sorta oval, but was only marginally successful.  I need to derive a mathematical pattern for a circular shape using a Q hook for my next attempt, or I may just wing it and see what sort of splatter pattern results.  Forensic crochet ballistics, I suppose. 

The weight difference of the fabrics is causing some issues. I'm just hoping it will all average out in the end. One of my sheets makes for a smaller row of crochets than the others. I'd recommend getting fabric of the same type/different color for a truly homogenous product. It's like slipping in a different weight of yarn in the middle of a project, makes for uneven results. I'd even go as far as purchasing the fabric instead of scavenging from random sheets, but then that takes away from the coolness factor of using your own old sheets/clothing. I suppose I could also combat this by ripping the lighter sheet into thicker strips, but haven't tried that yet.

Two of my fabrics are one-sided patterns, and they seem to fold over during the crochet so as to hide the pattern and show the "blank" side. Ma recommended I iron the strip with the pattern outward to combat this, and I think I will do so for the next rug. For now I'm merely fighting the folding tendency with each crochet, and it makes for slower progress.

The method I use to make longer strips is causing an issue with corners. i'm ripping the fabric in a serpentine back and forth pattern. At the turn of the serpentine, the new "corners" of fabric are poking out here and there. I started to cut these off in a 45 angle to make the U-turn of fabric smoother with less pronounced corners, and it's working well.

Rip each entire sheet into one big serpentine, then choose the next length of color according to what contrast you want for the next addition, then rip it into a custom length of strip for how long you want it to go. The variety looks much more random that way and keeps Lady Luck from bunching like colors together due to sheer repetition of the pattern.

Jordan then did a second attempt, this time in a circular pattern:

Here's his analysis of attempt #2:

The center opened up as I enlarged this one, I suppose the method I used to start the round was faulty. I patched the hole with an ill-fated attempt to crochet inward, reducing stitches as I went, but it just looks bugly. I may remove it and just have a hole there, or call it Whatever and put it in the garage or something. We'll see.

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Jordan is a chemist, so his scientific analysis combined with crocheting is spot-on and (I think) hilarious!  Maybe I'll try to convince him to make me a crocheted rag rug for Christmas....