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Every now and then I try to get into other crafts besides knitting. I really want to be better at crochet but I’ve never given it the time it needed to develop the skills in me.
I hope that in my year of making I will pick up a hook as well as my needles, but so far that hasn’t really happened. (Except for some crocheted hearts I may show you tomorrow.)
Last year I did make a pretty big (for me) project in crochet, and I think it’s pretty great, even if it didn’t quite come out how I expected.
Leisure Arts is a lovely Arkansas-based craft publisher, and they send me a lot of their pattern booklets, even when they don’t have to do with knitting. Their crochet Baskets booklet by Marly Bird caught my eye and I decided to try one of the projects.
There are six crocheted baskets in all, though half of the projects include baskets of varying sizes. There are a couple of square options, sets of nesting round and oval baskets, a pet bed and the one I tried, the Basket with Handles.
Marly’s version is striped and worked with two strands of cotton yarn held together throughout. Because I’m all about using what I have, I grabbed a couple of cones of variegated yarn and happily went on my way.
The basket — and indeed all the projects in the booklet — was rated easy, and it was. The stitch pattern was repetitive but pretty.
It’s a big basket (I’m pretty sure mine came out bigger than it was supposed to, even though I got gauge) that holds a lot of stuff, which is great. We’ve used it to hold musical instruments, but right now it’s full of dolls and stuffed animals.
It’s floppier than I expected, but I’ll put that down to my lack of skill at crochet and not the fault of the design.
I love the idea of storing yarn in a yarn basket, so I may well end up making some more of the projects in this books soon. And I have a ton of cotton yarn so this would be a great use for it.
Have you ever made a basket, with yarn or another material? I’d love to hear about it.
