How to Knit a Placemat on a Rectangular Loom Part 2/2

We’re going to cast off now and this is the actual plate for the placemat holder. You can see, it’s got a little bit of a stretch to it but not enough to make any difference. And what I decided to do is I took—there’s too much line in my color so I only used one line and two at the special colors to equal three lines. And this is how thick that it came out to be so you’re thinking, “Well, it’s not very thick.” Look at that, isn’t that just fantastic. So let’s cast off now. And what you’ll need is a crochet tool, this makes it a lot more simpler and this tool doesn’t have hook action that you see there so it’s a little more difficult though it’s doable.

Well, my hook today is a size K provided by FirestormCreations.com. You can just use a regular crochet needle of you have one. So what I’m going to do here is that if you got to look at the pattern here and you see how we finished off on this peg because the next one would be wrapping around there. We want to start with the opposite side. So if you finish on the other side, it doesn’t matter, that’s the side that you’re going to start with so it’s the opposite. So grabbing your crochet needle now using your fingers, you’re going to pull the loops up onto the crochet needle and now you’re going to rotate the needle toward the other side. You’re going to pull up with your hands. And then using your fingers, just grab the first one that you grabbed and pull through.

Okay, and what we need to do now at this particular point is, see these loose straggler? We’re not going to cut our string at this time, that’s a big time no-no. So if somebody tells you to do it, say no. Just lie it over top the middle of this actual craft. Lie it right down, smack down on the middle. And as we crochet and attach everything, it’s going to get stuck in between and you’ll never see where the starting point is of this. So I just dropped one needle, one hook while I was talking to you so I just put it back on. Okay, so we did—remember it was the opposite side, so we did this one, this one and now we’re going to come diagonally down to the next one, put it on to the hook and make sure you grab everything off the peg and then pull like so. Now to the other side, grabbing on and now, going down diagonally to the next one. It’s important when casting off that we do it sequentially.

Okay, keeping the wool down in the center. See how it’s between? It’s just getting caught on between, so it will stay out of the view of the users. So make sure you grab them all. Especially, you know, it’s really thin, so it’s not always easy to tell when working with it. Going back to the other side. See how that crochet needle just grabs and pulls it through? That’s exactly what you want. So you don’t need a cutting board. I am sitting this on a cutting board. The reason for that today is that I am zoomed in a little bit and I need to know where my wool will be. Sorry where the camera angle will be because I have a tendency to moving stuff and it’s out of the camera view. So if I slap it on the board and I know the board is being focused in on, then I’ll just keep it on the board not that you care about that stuff. So if you didn’t the whole loom knitting to like I did to the whole knitting apparatus itself, then you would be finished a lot sooner. But because I did the whole thing, we have a little bit of a way to go.

You can see, it’s kind of creating there like a braid. So at the end of this, what we’re going to do is that we’re going to hide. What we’re going to do is we’re going to stretch the exterior. The problem is, some people tell you to cut the strings way too early. And what happens is that if you cut it too small or not enough length on it, what are you going to do then? So we want to not cut the strings until after we know for sure how long we need to cut it out because you really can’t tell before you start doing this.

Okay, so we’ve just cast it off and now we’re just going to pull this through the loom. Now, you see how it’s kind of like punched in, that’s exactly why we never cut our strings too early. All we need to do now is restretch this back out and that stretching is because of these strings that are lying in the middle. So we’re just going to restrech. And now, we have left here on the hook, so we’re just going to wrap the string and pull it through that hole to that final loop. And it’s really kind of hard to see the loop because of all the special material. So now, what we’re going to do is now cut our string. Okay, cutting it about eight inches, and now we’re going to weave this back in. So what we need to do is where we pull the string through the loop. We’re not going to pull it out completely so just keep pulling like so. So now, we’re just going to work our way through the seam and just going through random spots, wrapping it around and pulling it through. And again, making sure that when you do that, you are not stretching the thing or condensing it by wrapping it too tightly. So you didn’t see any tying any knots and that’s because I didn’t and because you’re not going to. So this is called weaving. So we’re just weaving it into the seams.

And if you don’t weave long enough, so what happens is that if anybody stretches this, you’ll be able to start to see and this thing will start falling apart. But when you weave it almost three quarters back into your project, there’s no way that anybody is going to be able to pull that out. See when I stretched that, it just sucked in? That’s exactly what you’re looking for. So about three quarters away into the project. And now, what I’m going to do is give it a good stretch and see it’s not going to come out anymore, and that’s where we’re going to cut it. And then, fold it to the back, now the other side, remember, this is your starting. Again, what you’re going to just do is weaving it in. Try again sort of sticking it anywhere into the gap pulling it through, throwing it over. Sometimes, using your hand is a lot better than using tools, so I’m going to do one more and then I’m going to trim it. Because we started with a slipknot, it is actually a knot. So we’re not worried about this side falling out and that’s why we didn’t have to go so far.

And there you have another well done placemat.