Tag Archives: basket

Oct9

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m grateful that we are all over the worst of the covid and life is getting back to normal. I was back to work Friday, worked yesterday, will be there again today, and then I have three days off.

I don’t think it’s worth cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow because some of us are still tasting things weirdly, if at all. But I will sit down with pen and paper tonight and make a meal plan for the coming week in case I need to shop for ingredients.

This is what I made with the T shirt yarn that I showed you last time. I saved the prettier colours for the walls of the basket because that navy and tan is kind of ugly.

The handle is braided from the T shirt hems.

I will definitely cut the strips thinner next time for easier crocheting and a less chunky result.

And the swatch cap is finished and I’m happy with the gauge so I can cast on the sweater.

The sweater is Sporto https://knitty.com/ISSUEwbis11/KSPATTsporto.php and is a free pattern from knitty.com. It’s a top down seamless design, interestingly started from the top of the hood. It’s written for lots of options, either homespun or commercial yarn, a specific gauge or a recipe into which you plug your own gauge.

If you’re in Canada, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving, appreciating all the joys of fall, family and food.

Dec3

Blogmas Day 3

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Hi all. I have an FO to show you. It’s a basket crocheted out of super bulky jute yarn from work. This stuff is probably great for macrame but it’s a battle to crochet. It’s so rough and thick and my wrists and hands didn’t enjoy making this basket at all. I loosely followed the pattern on the ball band but I could see it wasn’t going to stay flat if I didn’t add extra stitches on the base. I also ignored the instructions to do front loop hdc on the sides or it would have curled in on itself very oddly.

I’ve had some lovely knitting and tea time with friends this afternoon. It felt good to be back to the easy relaxing knitting on the scarf after that jute.

I made gluten-free muffins and gallons of Yorkshire tea.

I have now used up three-fifths of the O’Go Donut. Two colours to go.

I took advantage of the daylight to open up Advent bag #3 which yielded a mushroom coloured yarn and another green bead.

Today’s recommended podcast is The Cozy Cottage Crochet. Hannah in Florida talks about crochet, her designs, and her cute baby daughter, Nova.

Two shifts to work before Mr Fixit and I are off on our retreat. Can’t wait!

Apr6

Fabric stashbusting

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My latest FO is a wonky basket crocheted from strips of jersey knit fabric. I made something similar not long ago, but this one burned up the last of this $3/metre fabric that I bought years ago.

Cutting the 2″ strips was quick thanks to my rotary cutter and ruler, but snipping a hole in each end of the strips and joining them took a couple of hours.

I ended up with a 2lb ball of the blue/brown and a smaller ball of the red/orange. With hindsight, I should have cut the strips lengthwise instead of crosswise and they would have curled the other way, leaving the colourful right side showing.

Whilst I didn’t follow a pattern, I was inspired to use the stitch pattern from Toni Lipsey’s Jessie Stash Basket, which alternates a single crochet in the back loop and a waistcoat stitch. The base of my basket is 14″ across, so I can fit a lot of stuff in there.

I probably should go easy on the big hook crochet as my right wrist, which I broke three years ago, has been aching again. I think the worst thing is opening cans, with the twisting motion that entails, but this kind of crochet comes second.

I worked today, but had three days off over the weekend. It was lovely but also frustrating as I intended to get going on a sewing project but kept overthinking it and never even started it.

Yesterday I took myself off on a mini road trip as I had something I wanted to pick up from a friend in a town 40 minutes drive away, so I took a picnic and made the most of it.

I had a homemade London Fog, a bag of yarn to wind into balls, food, water, my beach quilt and an extra sweater. It may look gloriously warm in these photos but it was around 10C and the slight breeze off the lake meant I needed to stay wrapped up.

Thanks to my workplace being closed on Sunday, it’s a short week and I only have three shifts rather than four. Wheeeeeee!

Mar16

Spring basket

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How long have these fabrics been marinating in the stash? Maybe 5 years.

They are thin jersey knits and I bought them really cheap. $3 a metre cheap. I hadn’t been working at the fabric store for long and I got carried away and bought far too much. I know better now.

Tonight I had an urge to make a basket with “T shirt” yarn. I cut two inch strips of the fabric and started attaching them together by making a small slit in the ends and looping them one through the other. My crochet hook is a 19mm one, the largest I own.

I made the base in a spiral using single crochet in the back loop. It can be hard work using such thick ‘yarn’ and such a large hook but it does grow fast.

Once I decided to stop increasing, I ended up letting the fabric do its thing and curve inwards so the outside is the back of the stitches.

It can hold A LOT of yarn!

Oct9

Back from being pampered, and some FOs

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Well, what a week! Mr Fixit and I enjoyed a lovely break away from it all in rural British Columbia. We were served gourmet vegan meals three times a day, took twice-daily walks in the woods, had three spa treatments each (mine included a pedicure, a facial and an all-over seasalt scrub), sunbathed (because the weather was amazingly warm for the time of year, and windless), and took a complete break from social media. We even swam in the nearby lake, which was cold enough to make you gasp and even go a little numb when you submerged yourself.

No photos for you, I’m afraid, as I only switched on my phone or iPad to check for messages from the boys at home. But if you want to check out the place, go to silverhills.ca and you can see for yourself.

I took the Habitat Cardigan project with me (link goes to my Ravelry project page) and finished it partway through the week.

It’s soft and drapey in the Loops & Threads Serpentine/Meandering Minis. Perfect for this time of year.

The construction is easy – just a rectangle, to which you add an extension to make it cover your bum and then a collar and cuffs. Pattern is by Jess at Make & Do Crew.

With that finished, I picked up a skein of the other yarn I took with me on my retreat, Berroco Espresso, which is a chainette yarn in acrylic/cotton. I whipped out a quick basket with an 8mm hook in a couple of days.

I have a second skein of this yarn and am in the process of making a pumpkin with it. It should be finished quite soon.

I’m excited about my birthday present to myself. My birthday was back in August, but I waited until Labour Day as I thought that there would be no lake swimming after that (I was wrong)! Then I got the massive toothache and waited until I had that dealt with, and by the time those aches and pains had gone I was out of town. No more excuses left, I went to the piercing place today and now have a new titanium helix stud.

My plan is to wait for it to heal and then get a cuff to put in, in place of the stud. And buy three extra pairs of studs to go in the old piercings.

Gosh, look at all that natural grey/brown hair! For the first time in ages, I don’t have any colour in my hair.

The fall weather hit properly yesterday, with the temperature dropping below 20 and the rain starting. I do love this time of year, though I’m glad the rain held off until this week.

Mar5

FO and nests for wildlife

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I have found my next project, and probably many more after that. Wildlife Rescue Nests is an organisation founded in Canada which has spread to many other countries. They have a Facebook page and a website.

If you wish to knit or crochet nests for orphaned animals and birds and donate them to your local rescue agencies, you will need to sign up on the Facebook page, read the terms and conditions, and download the patterns. They are made with two strands of medium weight yarn and worked tightly to make them as firm as possible. Such cute photos of the nests in use by tiny rescued creatures!

Tonight however I have finished my scrappy basket. Once again, it’s nighttime and I only have living room shots! Final measurements when laid flat – 16″ across and 17″ deep. I stuffed my Boho Cosy Wrap inside it to show it standing up so I can attest to the fact that it will hold a lot of yarn.

This project used ALL my small random balls of yarn, although I have to confess to tossing out a little bit of laceweight that I just couldn’t see myself ever using, and a small quantity of super bulky has been tucked in with some of its friends downstairs.

I made it up as I went along, starting with a chain at the bottom centre, which I worked around in an oval until it was big enough, then continued without increasing for the sides. I decreased six stitches about a third of the way up, then repeated that about two thirds of the way up. The top edge is finished with reverse sc.

I’ve only woven in a couple of ends around the top/handles, and I may just leave the rest. It’s not quite as self-supporting as I’d hoped, so I shall just have to keep it filled with yarn and/or a project.

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Mar3

Scrappy basket

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The basket grew well this afternoon, as I sat in the sunshine pouring through my dining room window. In between bread baking stages, I spent a couple of hours on the straight sides of the basket. It looked like I was going to run out of scraps so I zipped downstairs and found a few more small balls to add to the pile.

If I can keep the three strands to one DK, one worsted and one bulky it works out perfectly. The going was less tough once the banana fibre was finished, and the only other slightly challenging part was working into the round of bulky boucle  (Red Heart Stellar from an old project).

This is fun!

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Mar3

Pattern link and a new WIP

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The Rags to Riches fingerless mitts which I posted about a few days ago do have a pattern page on the blog, Spruce and Salsify, and here’s a link. 

I didn’t realize until yesterday that the pattern had already been published.

I spent a couple of tense days without a hook in my hand, wondering what I would make next. (I confess, it truly is an addiction!) I wanted something chunky that I could make fast, so last night I pulled out my container of scraps (small balls about 5 grams or less) and a 7mm hook and starting crocheting with three strands of yarn together.

I’m making a scrap basket to hold more scraps – how holistic is that?! The hooking can be a bit hard on the hands with this firm a tension but I do want the sides to stand up on their own.

This is the progress so far…

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It’s all single crochet (or double if you’re in the UK). It’s amazing how random fibres and colours can become a cohesive whole when mixed this way. The purple is banana fibre, the white is cotton, the rest mostly acrylic, and I’m just adding in another yarn when one runs out, so there are no hard colour changes.

I am very grateful for this day and for you, my dear readers.