What is this? Two new posts. Who is behind this?

Turns out it’s me, needing an outlet.

I’ve been doing lots of sorting and organizing this year, and trying to keep myself occupied/distracted. 2020 has been a beast of a year between COVID-19, social injustice finally being addressed/hopefully being fixed, politics are a nightmare, the list goes on and on and on and on. Every morning I just tell myself ‘be kind’. If all I can do in my days is be kind right now, I feel like I’m doing something.

So, if you were thinking ‘I want to make so-and-so something to brighten their day’ one of or a pair of these potholders are super quick and easy.

This pattern is seriously nothing new, I’m not taking credit for the pattern, just sharing with you my numbers and a little twist.

Using 100% cotton worsted weight yarn and a size US G hook, I chain 36 as the start. Then you simply do 1 single crochet in each stitch down your chain, and 1 single crochet in each chain stitch back. You want to make sure you have 72 stitches in your first round. Continue doing single crochet around and around, do not chain or turn your work between rows.

For the mostly cream potholder, I used those super tiny scraps that you feel like you might not have any use for, all the way down to only 20 inches of yarn or so, and I did 20 rounds. Here’s my best tip to change color without any jog or funky line in crochet: do all the steps in your stitch (whatever stitch it is) until the very last yarn over and pull loop through, then you pick up the new color and use that to do the final yarn over and pull through. So, in this case, since you’re doing single crochet, you insert hook and pull through current color, then yarn over the new color and pull that through both loops. Please do NOT worry about weaving in or crocheting over the tails, just do a good square knot and trim ends to no shorter that an inch and a half. These ends will be inside the middle of the potholder, and no one will see them.

For the stipey potholder, I incorporated a basic extended single crochet (esc) stitch in the first round of each color followed by two rounds of plain single crochet, and I did 22 rounds. The extended stitch does make your rows a tiny bit shorter over the whole pattern. To do the extended single crochet you simply drop down one row to insert the hook and pull through the first loop, then continue on with the remainder of the stitch. When switching colors in this potholder, I wanted to somewhat hide the color change along the folded edge. To do that, I changed colors the stitch before the extended single single crochet stitch, so the color changes a few stitches past what would be the end of row. For my extended crochet rows, the repeat is: 1 esc, 2 sc. To make things feel symmetrical I placed the extended single crochet stitch of the next section in the middle of the two extended stitches from the previous section. You could easily move it to the either stack them or have it appear to cascade by putting them closer to right by one stitch.

Finishing these off is super easy. On your final round, you will end your crochet in the middle of the first side when you lay it down flat. That will become the corner of the ‘top’ of the potholder, these really don’t have a true top or bottom. Then you ladder stitch both sides to the last together all the way to the other corner, weave in, and your done.

I would like to add a note about yarn. The Lily Sugar N Cream yarn works great for these, so does Crafter’s Secret, I Love This Cotton, and even Cotton Supreme. The first two I listed are a bit more firm and can be tougher to work with for those with arthritis or sensitivity to having to push through yarn. The key is to choose 100% cotton yarn or it will melt from the heat of the pans, yes melt (super sad).

There are lots of videos/patterns out there for this style of potholder, just google or search on YouTube ‘folded potholder’ if you need a good visual.

Stay safe and please be kind.