So I’ve moved on from the dishcloth, and worked up a basic placemat pattern. I’m calling it my “Dummy Pattern” partly because it’s so ridiculously easy, and partly because you can drop any design into the middle. I worked it up to match one of the dishcloths I made—everyone is going to hate me come Christmas, I just know it.
Standard placemats are 13 x 18 inches (33 x 46 cm), which is what this worked out to be. I used some mystery yarn I had, a sort of bulky worsted. This mat has a 3” border around a stockinette rectangle, in which you can work a design if you choose.
Dummy Placemat Pattern
Needles: US Size 8
Yarn: 160 yds worsted
Gauge: 16 sts and 23 rows = 4 inches (10 cm)
Cast on 71 sts (this is an odd number because the design I was working had an odd number of sts; CO 72 sts if your design has an even number of sts)
Rows 1-14: Knit across
Row 15 (and all odd rows through Row 69): k12, p47 (or p48 if you CO 72 sts), k12
Row 16 (and all even rows): Knit across
Rows 70-83: Knit across
Bind off loosely; weave in ends and block finished mat
Note: This gives you 14 rows of garter border at top and bottom with 56 rows stockinette (47 or 48 stitches wide) in which to work the pattern of your choosing. Simply center the design part and insert its given directions into the Dummy Pattern above.
Dumping Explorer, Embracing Firefox
Because I can be such a Luddite, I've been fighting with Blogger on my Mac (usually I use Mr. O'Kitten's PC). It looks like all hell on the Mac...real crapola. All scrambled around, columns awry, and this morning Blogger told me cookies weren't enabled (they were) and/or JavaScript was disabled (it wasn't).
So it occurred to me that maybe the problem was that the iMac doesn't like Explorer. (Not that I like it either, but I've been too lazy to change it.)
I download free Firefox, which takes but a few seconds, click back over to Blogger, and now everything is all fine and dandy. I even have the Blogger toolbar (you know the one, the "edit html" mode: bold/ital/insert a link/insert a pic)--which I could never get before on the Mac. I couldn't even get the "preview" mode.
Stupid Microsoft. Stupid Explorer. Stupid Bill Gates. Stupid obscenely rich people. Stupid Blogger. Stupid PMS. Grrrrr.
And Firefox is FREE! I'll let you know how it goes. So far it seems faster, and it looks way nicer.
Humph. Geeez, it's only 6:30 and I'm already ranting. This does not bode well, does it?
mimsy borogroves
- Obsidian Kitten
- Queens, New York, United States
- "One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it--it was the black kitten's fault entirely." (L. Carroll, Through the Looking Glass) I'm Yankee-Born and Southern-Raised, which makes me kind of Southern Gothic (in the old literary sense of the word). After 15 years in the Big Apple, I spent 4 years on a farm in Michigan raising chickens and llamas and learning to spin, knit, and needle-felt. Now I'm back home in NYC with my much-beloved spouse and one crazy tortiseshell cat. You can also find me on Ravelry.com as okitten.
the tulgey wood
O frabjous day!
fa la la la la
the tulgey wood
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9 comments:
I could actually use some placemats, since one of my cats likes to *ahem* sleep on our sole eating table. Thanks for the pattern!
Don't you just love the word "luddite"? (And isn't it great to love scifi but still be an occasional luddite?) Rant away, my dear! Let us know how Firefox goes. I've heard good things about it. I'm newish to using our home Mac and have only used the Safari browser.
Firefox is brilliant, and far more standards-compliant than IE. The only browser that compares is Opera, which takes forever to load. It's better for total computer nerds, anyway... I really think that the best thing about Firefox 2.0 (new version) is that IT HAS A SPELLCHECKER! Type something incorrectly in a text box and watch it tell you. Heehee.
I love Firefox. Extensions rock!! I think my favorite is "Nuke Anything" - you can right-click on an object on a page, and it's banished from your sight - very handy for flashing ads.
right on!
Did you get my call today?
Long time you haven't been blogging ! Hope everything is OK. I just wanted to tell you that I had the idea to create a group "CATS ON TUESDAY" and the next day I had already 43 participants ! So if you want to blog once a week on your cats, look at my blog, everything is written there.
How is little Pepper ?
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
Considering that I haven't made the first Christmas gift this year I should probably get off my butt and start doing damn placemats.
Gahhhhh...!
Damn. Why haven't I been using Firefox? I'm a computer nerd, but I'm a lazy computer nerd. I'd rather fiddle with something for hours and hours and patch it up with duct tape rather than simply dump it and reload something else.
I have a mental problem.
And firefox has a great 'skin' that you can download...'Halloween' that's what I'm using. Little witches, skulls, black cats and bats. All in pumpkin orange and black.
Ahh xmas...oh yeah I need to get onto that one too.:(....placemats hey?
Well, it sounds so much better, not that I understood much more than....stupid Bill Gates, Stupid PMS, lol.
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