Knitting Pattern - Elegant Lap Rug

An Easy Knit : suitable for beginners

Materials

• 8 x 50g balls of an Aran or Worsted weight / 10 ply wool blend. I used Paton's Inca, colourway 7008 (58 metres / 63 yards per ball). Inca is a 50% wool, 30% acrylic, and 20% alpaca blend.

  It's a good idea to choose a yarn that can be washed easily, especially if this is a gift for non-knitters who might just chuck it in the washing machine!

• 6 or 7 mm needles; an 80 cm circular works well (knit back and forth, not in the round)

• 2 stitch markers

• Darning needle

Gauge

About 10 stitches : 10 cm / 4" - not important (isn't that nice for a change?)

Size

About 70 x 120 cm (26" x 47")

Abbreviations

• K : knit
• P : purl
• wyif : with yarn in front
• slip 1 : slip one stitch from the left hand needle to the right hand needle without knitting it
• RS : right side of work facing you
• WS : wrong side of work facing you

These techniques are illustrated nicely on the Knit Picks web site.

You can, of course, make this longer or wider very easily, as the mood takes you. Simply cast on more stitches for extra width, and knit more rows for extra length. The nice thing about having only 69 stitches on the needles is the rows fit onto one needle (no need for sewing panels together at the end), and they're very fast to knit. If you put in a few hours' knitting every night, you could easily finish this in a week or two.

Method

1. Cast on 69 stitches.

2. Purl first row (WS)

3. Border Pattern : Knit 12 rows of Linen Ridge
   • Row 1 (RS) : (K1, wyif, slip 1), repeat to last stitch, K1
   • Row 2 (WS) : Purl
   • Row 3 (RS) : K1, (K1, wyif, slip 1), repeat to end of row
   • Row 4 (WS) : Purl

4. Body Pattern : Basically, you need to keep 8 stitches at start and end of each row in the Linen Ridge pattern (it's helpful to mark these sections with stitch markers). Then knit the remaining 54 stitches, between the 2 borders, in Purl Ridges. Here's it all written out :
   • Row 1 (RS) : (K1, wyif, slip 1) 4 times. K 53. (wyif, slip 1, K1) 4 times
   • Row 2 (WS) : Purl
   • Row 3 (RS) : K1, (K1, wyif, slip 1) 3 times, K1. (K1, P1) to last 9 sts. K1. (K1, wyif, slip 1) 3 times, K2.
   • Row 4 (WS) : Purl

5. When you get to a length of about 7 cm / 3" from the desired final length, knit 12 rows of the Linen Ridge border pattern.

6. Bind off. A nice one is K1, (slip stitch back to LH needle, K2tog), repeat to end. Cut yarn, and pull tail through last stitch.

7. Darn in all those ends! Block if so desired, then snuggle up with it and a loved one on the couch and stay cosy warm all winter!

© Denise Sutherland 2007. For personal use only.

I wanted to make an elegant, simple lap rug in dark tones, that would suit a modern stylish household, and that a guy would like - white and lacy was definitely out. It needed to be a pretty quick knit, and a simple pattern with enough interesting bits that I didn't go nuts. I also didn't want to have to sew anything together at the end.

After searching through stitch dictionaries, and knitting quite a few swatches, I came up with this combination, which is easy to memorise, simple to figure out where you're up to in the pattern if you set it down for a while, knits up quickly, has a wonderful understated texture, and was a pleasure to knit. I hope you enjoy it too!

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