When I first learned to crochet, I lived in Bella Vista, a small, rural community just east of Redding, California. One of my main forms of recreation (when I was not crocheting) was to find as many used crafting and crochet books as I could.

One such find was this copy of the Better Homes and Gardens book, Rug Making:

While I wanted to make most of the projects in the book, I found this throw particularly enchanting:

Not only was it crocheted, it was also embraced a scrap aesthetic I found (and continue to find) particularly charming.

Alas, despite years of accumulating stuff (some of which I needed, some of which I didn’t), I never accumulated the scraps necessary to make this throw rug.

Then, while ruminating on all the possible project I could make with my newly acquired skeins of silk sari strips, I remembered this long ago project. So after this morning’s first cup of coffee, I got out the book, my K hook, and set out to make this rug.

I began by working a small rectangle in a light colored worsted weight yarn so that I could learn how to properly work the corners. While I love the vibrance of the fiber I bought yesterday, the rapid changes in color and the fact that the colors are sometimes quite dark sometimes make it difficult to accurately find the stitches. The yarn swatch gave me the opportunity to work out any difficulties I would have with the pattern directions using a fiber where it was easy to find the errors.

Once the swatch was done, I made a chain as long as the coffee table in my living room and got to work.

Here is a detail of the stitches as I worked them in the sari strips:

and here is an overview of the project so far, one in sunshine:

and one in shadow:

I can hardly wait to see what this will look like when I finally work the last stitch.