Stash Knitting #1

The first project mined from my small stash of yarn. The plan is to knit a felted potholder, based on the Mason-Dixon nine-patch dishcloth (here's a link to the original pattern). It's time to replace the old potholders, which are so tattered that they became victims of the dog's chewing and looked not much the worse for it.

The yarn is bits of Cascade 220 left over from a scarf that my daughter was working on; some more Cascade 220 from the felted handbag that I made in 2007; and a tiny bit of Malabrigo from a pair of purple felted mittens (apparently not in my blog). Gauge is about 12 stitches and a ridiculous number of rows to four inches: I suspect that I'm not counting correctly, but I figured two rows for every ridge, and I have about 12 or 14 ridges to four inches.

Here's my first-ever mitered border, also garnered from Mason-Dixon Knitting:
My brain had me decreasing at the corners on the first try, as though I was working a mitered square. Nope, you need to increase, so that you end up with these wonderful angled edges, which will then be sewn together.
Now for a marathon viewing of Dancing with the Stars: last night's competition, and then the finale tonight. If I learn how to download pictures from my phone, I'll have a picture tomorrow of the wild turkey visiting a colleague's house by the river in Kankakee. It was the talk of the neighborhood; many phone calls fielded back and forth between neighbors about watching out for the turkey, making sure that the turkey was safe, making sure that no one's dog bothered the turkey. We were thinking that the turkey could take the dogs, and it was so healthy looking that I suspected that it was an escapee from a zoo, except that there are no zoos near Kankakee. Turkey farmers, perhaps you might want to check your pens for a wandering, two-foot tall turkey with a crazy corsage of feathers in the middle of his chest.