Random small acts of knitting

I just had to share this, the world’s most pointless knitted project ever. I’m very proud of it :) Basically, I’ve inherited a few half used old balls of wool and have been wondering how I could a quick knitting fix out of them without too much effort on the pattern front.

This morning I caught sight of the plants on the windowsill and inspiration struck. Why live with brown plastic plant pots when I could knit plant pot covers???

I appreciate this may not be the most practical plant pot cover in the world, but the wool feels like it must be mostly synthetic, so I’m sure I can always give it a quick wash to get any soil off. It’s interesting the way the colours knit up, almost like an ikat fabric.

I suppose it would be easiest to knit this on a circular needle, but as i didn’t have any the right size, I knitted a flat trapezium and joined it at a back seam. I am a complete novice knitter, but this was my pattern theory:

On a flower pot that increases gradually to the top, use a tape measure to measure around the top of the pot and around the bottom of the pot, and the actual side length from the top to bottom edge.
Let’s say your pot is 10cm high, 10cm round the bottom, and 15cm round the top.

Look at the tension info on your wool label: ie. 24 stitches and 30 rows to 10cm on 3.75mm needles, then do the maths:

10cm base: cast on 24 stitches plus 2 for sewing up = 26 stitches.
15cm round top: You’ll be casting off 36 stitches plus 2 for sewing up = 38 stitches
10 high pot: 30 rows should be worked
So, you’ll need to increase as evenly as possible by 12 stitches (38 minus 26) over the 30 rows, one stitch increase in a row.

This all assumes that you are using stocking stitch. I didn’t. I forgot! I knitted every row, and it didn’t work. (And I didn’t know the tension of the wool, so in the end my theory fell apart and I was just winging it.)
The result certainly makes me smile. And I like to think it keeps the plant snug too!