How to Crochet an Area Rug with Yarn

Yesterday I finally finished crocheting the colorful area rug! 

Cat for scale.

A few months ago I received two trash bags full of old yarn. I was warned they were not color coordinated, and were all different sizes and weights and it looked like mostly acrylic, but still took them since I didn't have a lot of yarn then, and wanted to try some scrap blankets and colorful projects.   After testing the yarn using the burn test, I determined most of it was  acrylic, but some balls were wool.  I started a ripple stitch blanket and quickly realized that I would not be able to have the stripes be all one same color, so I did a smaller crocheted cushion cover instead. 

Catherine Wheel cushion, learned stitch from YouTube videos!

I crocheted a basket to hold my stationary, as well as some slippers for my husband. I made some dryer balls. I gave a few balls of yarn to my cat who likes to chase them around the house and fight with them.  The pile of yarn stayed the same, though, still huge, still taking up a lot of space in the closet. I needed a yarn-eater project. And so the area rug was born.

The only colors I avoided were the browns. Other than that I just grabbed colors as they came. Holding 9 strands of yarn together I started going around in an oval. I have some experience with crochet, so I just winged this without a pattern. I didn't want to be counting , but in general you want to increase in the rounded edges, then crochet normally on the straight edges. On some rounds I increased 5 times, others just 3, or none, depending on how it looked, trying to keep it from waving (too many increases) or curling (too few).  But instructions like these might help. Because the balls of yarn were not all equal, some of them ran out before the others, which helped stagger the color changes. In some cases, if I had the same color, I just tied the ends of the yarn with a square not and continued crocheting with the new ball. Other times I just found a color that looked like it was in the same "family", or that it might add something interesting to the rug. That's how it turned out to change colors depending on the dominant tints, going from a yellowish center to a hot pink round and then to orange and green.

At the end of the rug, when I was already down to the last balls of yarn and didn't have enough for substituting the colors when they ran out, I just did an extra round around the rug, and then sewed in the end: no fancy finishes or edgings.

While it doesn't show up in pictures, the rug does want to curl up around the edge: I'm guessing that because I continued knitting with a thinner strand as the yarns ran out, I should've gone up a needle size, or made the stitches a lot larger to compensate. For now I'll see if it settles on its own, but if not, I'll probably rework the last couple of rounds.  I also broke the hook halfway through the project. I bought a set of 6 glittery hooks in Joann's about 7 years ago, and little by little they've been snapping  right in the middle. It happened while knitting the round basket, and I had to toss the substitute the needle halfway through with a different size. This time, I decided to repair it: I held the broken edges over the flame of a candle to melt the plastic, then smooshed them together. I wrapped some tape around the bump caused by the fused plastic squeezing out the ends to make it smoother, and was able to finish the rug. The hook feels strong, so I may keep it and continue using it.

repaired hook with a view of the wrong side of the rug

I am not only happy that I finished the area rug, which is now covering the floor next to my side of the bed, but that I also went through ALL THAT YARN. There is still about a shopping bag full of odds and ends of yarn in browns, tans and variegated colors, but that will be easier to stash away in a corner until I come up with an idea for it.