THAT! That is what I will make!

When my hands get the zoomies, it’s time for a new project. I like exploring new tools and media, and I especially like the joy of being able to say at the end - “wow, I figured that *new thing* out all by myself,” like a real grown-up adult. This form of creative process can be very fun, but is not without risk, bump or blunder, as portrayed in the particular journey detailed in full below...

The other day, I saw some giant golden glitter crochet hooks, and I couldn’t resist. I immediately put them on order. When they arrived in the mail, I thought to myself, what can one make with beautiful giant golden glitter crochet hooks?

I looked around for inspiration. It was spring heading into summer and the thought crocheting a giant warm afghan, slowly expanding over my hot sweaty steamy summer skin seemed like literally the worst idea.

Then I looked down at my ancient hole-ly Brooklyn rent-controlled apartment floor and noticed a rug I’d bought years ago that covered a particularly ostentatious hole and thought - THAT. That is what I will make. Do I know how to make a rug? No. Can I figure it out on my own? Yes of course, I’m not an idiot. And thus my journey began.

Being a tree hugger from birth in conjunction with the understanding that I might really bung this up on my first try, I decided to try a rag rug. I traveled up to my local Salvation Army in Ithaca, NY, and perused the old sheets section.

A rug made from white sheets? Absolutely not, it would get immediately dirty. A rug made from a pink sheet with cute dogs? No, I’d have to chop right through their little faces and I’m a vegetarian. A flannel rug? No, that would be clearly veering right into the hot sweaty afghan territory I was avoiding at the beginning of this journey. One of the keys to my creative process is to stick to my guns, and in this case - no unnecessarily sweaty summer legs was a sticking point.

I settled on a nice light cotton wine red sheet and a cotton duvet cover in a red, white and blue floral pattern. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with a red rug when my favorite color is red.

When I got home, I realized I had no idea what size of rug my fabric could make. I for darn sure wasn’t going to spend my time making a horribly mis-proportioned rectangular rug. I’m a sensible engineer - I do things that make sense. So, long story short, I decided on a circular rug because with a circle rug, ya just keep circling til you get tired or run out of fabriiic!

I finally had what I thought was all the tools, materials, and design planning I needed to create my future favorite rug. Blast off!

First things first, I needed to craft my crochet “yarn” from the sheets. Easy enough I thought to myself, easy enough. I’d read somewhere I just needed to turn the fabric into 1-1.5in thick strips. Ah geez, right out the gate I realized I had forgotten scissors! I fetched them from the kitchen drawer where they had been lazing about. As I held them up to the first sheet ready to slice into the fabric, I immediately realized that before I could cut strips, I would first need to cut off all of the weird sheet edges.

Now, in reading this - I’m sure this all sounds like a very innocent, innocuous task. After completion, I could say those five magic words: “I cut off the edges”.

In five words I could also say, “that gal ran the marathon”. Big deal when you read the words, until you comprehend the reality of the situation. This theoretical heroic lady has just completed hours of incredibly intense physical exertion preceded theoretically by months and possibly years of training. Think of the shoe bills, the shin splints and the days wondering why she’s invested this much of her life killing herself for a race. While we’re on this tangent, in three words I could say, “man discovered fire”. Think of the implications of that creative discovery: the industrial revolution, cooking delicious spaghetti, artisan porcelain mugs, and also - I’ve recently discovered the show “Survivor” and holy smokes - fire can really turn the tables for those folks.

Back to cutting edges, I quickly discovered the logistics of this endeavor. A queen sized sheet is roughly 8ft x 8.5ft, which means the perimeter of this sheet is 8ft + 8ft + 8.5ft + 8.5ft = 33ft. We’re not talking 33ft of easy-cut paper here, we’re talking 33ft of cotton. My scissors were breaking a sweat by the end of the first edge. By the time I finished cutting edges off all of my fabric - I’d cut roughly 99ft of fabric. BAM. My poor scissors were ready for a vacation somewhere tropical, such as “T.A.H.I.T.I., it’s a magical place”. - Phil Coulson, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD

At this moment, I took a stop and glanced over at my golden glitter crochet hook and it began to dawn on me the giant chasm still standing between us. Math-ing it up - I needed to cut my fabric into strips that were 1-1.5in across, which meant making 192 8ft-long cuts, for a total of 1,536ft (over a quarter mile) of cutting! While it might be hard to imagine - this is truly the first moment I began to rethink my “I’m not an idiot” statement from the beginning of this tale.

Thankfully, I’m not a COMPLETE idiot and I realized that my scissors could cut through more than one layer of fabric at a time. Thank you scissors! I also realized I could make straighter cuts if I folded the sheet nicely and cut along the folds. Needless to say I powered through at least 384ft more of 4-layered fabric cuts with my faithful scissors. I named them Galahad (after Sir Galahad, renowned for his gallantry and purity as the most perfect of all knights).

You may be wondering what I did next…. take a nap? Ice my hand? Eat a popsicle?

No, I stared at the giant pile of roughly 200 used sheet strips and realized that it still wasn’t a usable “yarn”. EVEN AFTER ALL THAT.

As tired as I was, at this point I was committed. A rug must emerge from the ashes of my endeavor. It was clear I was probably an idiot for blindly stumbling into a project that involved over a quarter mile of cotton cutting, but I didn’t want my family and friends to realize I was an idiot. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I needed to connect these strips together and after some research, it looked like there were three ways to do this. The first was knots, but apparently using knots ran the risk of creating an uncomfortable rug to stand on. After all my invested effort, uncomfortable feet was not an option. Alternatively, I could use a sewing machine to connect two strips at a time. I opened my hall closet door and looked my sewing machine square in the eye. It had been gathering dust for the past couple years and I could tell that today it was cranky as all bananas. It only worked when it was in a good mood… so I knew that today it would crush my soul and I closed the closet door.

I turned back to my trusty set of scissors (Galahad) for option number three: chaining strips together by adding small slits at the end of each strip and using a looping technique to connect them. Just 400 more cuts to go!

After I connected about ten strips this way, I decided to finally start my crochet portion of the journey. I picked up the golden glitter crochet hook at last!

...and quickly realized that each 8.5ft strip gave me only about six (6) crochet loops in the rug. I would need to double-fist Galahad and the crochet hook from now until the end of the project to keep this train on the tracks. The rest is history.

I can say in reflection, no animals were harmed in the making of this rug, but at least one pair of scissors will never fully recover. The completed rug turned out the perfect size for my ancient hole-ly wooden bedroom floor, it has a really cool organic pattern, its a perfect cushy thickness under my feet and it can easily be thrown in the washer for cleaning. Aside from some mild carpel tunnel in my right hand, I couldn’t be happier!

AND, I did it all myself...the *best* feeling.

THE END

Epilogue: Right after I finished making the rug, I bought a house upstate and committed to making rugs for the entire house. I know, you say, wow, you’re REALLY an idiot. And maybe I am, but I promise I will get help with the cutting bit this next time around and WAY MORE SCISSORS! (Do they make scissors with golden glitter handles?)