T shirt yarn crochet rug

About 5 years ago I bought this yarn. I was living in Bradford, doing a bit of knitting and loving wondering around this Mecca of yarn and this large cone appealed to me. Texere is one of the most amazing places to visit if you're into anything yarny. It's been a couple of years since I was last there but they have yarn of all descriptions over 3 floors, from luxury brands and snuggly soft cashmere, to heavy duty rope and bright, cheap acrylic, it's all there. This yarn came from a section where everything was sold by weight, I think it was something like a couple of pence per gram.
I was quite taken by the turquoise yarn with tiny flecks of pink, orange, blue and purple.

 

I'm not sure what this yarn would've been created for, (a lot of these cheaper yarns seem to be ends of lines or seconds) maybe it could've been woven for upholstery cloth or something?

When I bought the yarn I only knitted and I had dreams of knitting  a blanket from this yarn. I cast on hundreds of stitches in order to try and make it wide enough without having to sew stripes together. I was planning on creating a plain straight blanket with a moss stitch border. Unfortunately I only ever got about 15cm into it. 

There were many problems. 

I used needles that were probably too small, the yarn was very heavy, carrying all the weight of the blanket on needles was really tricky and the yarn is really rough.

It's a course, tweedy yarn that I think is probably all wool, it's not very soft to be working with.

After giving up my blanket idea, I tried crocheting granny squares but the beauty of the yarn was lost with all the knotty stitches so again this project was abandoned.

Last week, after years of neglect, I found this yarn in my stash and though about pairing it with something else.

No, not a spider, this is a pile of strips, cut from old pairs of leggings.
There are very many projects that I keep coming accross on blogs, ravelry and pinterest that use old t shirts cut up into long strips. I don't ever seem to have spare t shirts that I feel can be cut up though. I use old t shirts to sleep in or to run in, if there's still any life in them I won't through them away.
Leggings, however are different. I wear leggings pretty much every day, and I'm always getting holes in them that can't be repaired, they split across the seams or I fall over and tear the knees, so I've built up a little stock pile of holey old leggings.
I cut them up into strips and am doing this

crocheting over the old leggings with y favourite tweedy yarn to hopefully create a floor rug.

I'm a little further on than in these pictures and I rather like it. It's not completely flat, but I hope when it's finished I can block it and that it'll be something useful.