Free Yarn

I recently received some free yarn from a friend at work. It came from a sample spool which her poor unfortunate husband had been asked to wind into balls. I received three of these balls. The yarn is a kind of biscuit colour, beige but a bit warmer.

The yarn is roughly DK in weight and of completely unknown length. It's a loosely would cotton and I plan to knit some grocery bags as it feels quite strong, plus I have some handles picked up on sale which will work perfectly. However, I couldn't wait to drop all my other projects wanted to knit a sample using the yarn to get a feel for it and came up with this

I don't like to knit sample squares. I used to and always put them away planning to use them for something but never did, so now I always knit a patterned square just to get a feel for the yarn, rather than to check the tension. I'm a bit of a cowboy knitter, I never check tension.

As you've probably already guessed all of these little patterned squares tend to wind up being used for the same thing. Yep, that's right

Coasters...very original, I know.

The pattern itself is very simple. Basically cast on an odd number of stitches twice the length of one side of the square. For this you may be lucky and have yarn with a ball band stating the number of stitches in an inch. I didn't so I guessed and cast on 51 stitches.

You can selvage the edges for a neater appearance and to do this you just slip the first stitch in each row and purl the last stitch.

The patterns is as follows;

Row 1 sl 1, k23, sl 1, k2tog, psso, k23, p 1. (You have reduced by 2 stitches).

Row 2 (and all even rows) sl 1, knit to last stitch, p 1.

Carry on in pattern decreasing the number of stitches knitted on each side of the decrease by 1.

Continue until 3 stitches remain on needle.

Final Row sl 1, k2tog, psso. Cut off yarn and draw through last stitch and fasten off securely. Weave in all ends.

I added a tassel to each side of this square but in hindsight wouldn't do it again with this yarn, it's quite a stiff yarn and as such the tassels kept working their way loose and had to be sewn in place.

This little square has taken up residence on my desk at work, although I have many more strewn across the house.

I plan to use the rest for grocery bags and will post a pattern for those soon, although if anyone has any better ideas for using this yarn (of unknown length), please let me know.