Every wonder what your bath mat would look like on your table? Neither have I, but I decided to take this pattern and make it a table runner instead.
I took the “Everyday Bath Mat” by Lisa Mason from her book “Yarnplay at Home” to make a table runner for my friend Staci’s (please note it’s not me, she spells it wrong :-D), then, upcoming nuptials. I did my standard and let her pick a pattern from
Beautiful Wedding Present
several to choose for her wedding gift. I was actually supposed to make “Georgetown Table Runner” from the “Yarnplay” book. Well, I had to improvise when it turned out I ordered the wrong book, but she didn’t know – at least she didn’t until she read this. How can you blame me for buying the wrong book? The titles are really similar and there weren’t any table runners in the book I ended up buying.
I was desperately looking for a similar pattern to “Georgetown” and thought, “I can make ‘Everyday Bath Mat’ work, so what if it WAS supposed to go on the bottom of the bathroom floor?!” I took my pound (really it was 710 yards, but it’s really big) of Bernat Cotton Country Colors and adjusted the pattern to only have nine of the 13 knit/seed stitch repeats. Then I intentionally went off book to make it longer. Note, you use the double strand method (knit with two strands of yarn) with this pattern, so if you’re planning on making something really long buy another skien. I could have made this longer if I bought another skein, but at this point, I decided it was a table top runner instead. (Something about ordering your yarn before you look at the pattern.)
You could also adjust the repeated rows down to six and make it narrower and longer. As you can see, it’s really easy to have fun with this pattern, even if it was destined to be a train wreak, and make a multitude of simple projects using the core of this pattern.
Side story about blocking this project – it sucked using conventional methods in a humid climate during summer. I tried wet blocking (for the last time) and it did not work out so well. It ended up smelling musty in the towel after a couple of days, so I washed it (all the while worrying about colors running, but it’s variegated, “Who cares?!” I reassured myself) and ironed it – twice – to get it that nice, flat shape. From that point on, I only iron-block my projects.
I don’t know if anyone else has had as many battle scars from a knitting project and still made it work. I’m sure there are funny stories out there of failures, but I need to know more of these success-failures. THAT needs to be a knitting book!
On the Bride's Table
All these patterns that you will end up with something awesome at the end, no matter what! Oh, yeah. I’m gonna take down pattern comments and try to fail and end up succeeding – if I don’t have a break down first – then write a knitting best seller of the compilation!
Going to finish my blanket that is a repeat of this story,
-Stacy C.
theyarnfix 
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