A couple of years ago I got some bargain British wool from one of my favourite wool festivals - Wonderwool Wales. The wool was British which ticks my box, a bargain (£10 for about 3.5kg) which definitely ticks my box, but it was rough as anything!

Now, I’m not the type to shy away from a wool with ‘character’ however this wool was gnarly and not in a cool surfer dude way.

The wool sat in my stash for a couple of years until I insisted on using up my oldest stash and finding appropriate projects. A couple of months before, I had set up a yarn dying workshop and decided to dye some of the gnarly wool so that it wasn’t all just undyed. So, I plonked cakes of the wool into massive pots of dye at different intervals to get variations in the depth of colour (it was more technical than that but you get the gist).

In the end I came up with the idea of a marled rug which would allow me to blend the dyed and undyed wool and make use of the subtle shade differences in the dyed wool.

If you want to make your own, it is very simple. I have provided the weights of wool that I used but essentially you could use any hard-wearing yarn that you have at your disposal and introduce lots of colours.

Hook:

10mm hook - use something sturdy like a bamboo or metal hook.

Yarn:

I used 1800g of aran/chunky wool (there were no labels on the wool I simply bought it in massive hanks, only knowing that it was undyed, British and gnarly). I used 500g of dyed wool and 1300g of undyed wool.

Construction:

The entire rug is crocheted holding two strands of yarn. This allows for a dense but springy rug and also allows the colours to blend beautifully throughout the finished project.

TIP - If you are using similar colour choices to my version, it is best to introduce the darker colour strand at the beginning of a new row. The same applies when you go back to the self-coloured rows in the final block of the rug. It creates a neater finished look.

Stitches:

This rug uses two simple stitches - double crochet (dc (sc in US)) and slip stitch (ss) to make up the linen/tweed stitch which creates a nice, flat fabric.

In this pattern you will see that I have started with a foundation double crochet (fdc (fsc in US)) which is a great alternative to using chains as your foundation row because it gives a stretchier foundation row and doesn’t tend to taper like a chained foundation can. If this is a new technique to you, I suggest checking out this video on YouTube. It’s a great technique to have under your belt.

I have provided instructions for using a foundation chain also, in case you don’t want to use the fdc.