Something new

I decided to try one of many things I have pinned in Pinterest. I found this really cute little crochet basket and thought I would give it a go. The pattern, which can be found HERE, calls for an extra chunky yarn and a size 8 hook.

Now I have done very little crochet in my life so it took a while and a good bit of ripping out and redoing to get this one going. In the spirit of trying to use or get rid of stash, I dug through my yarn and found this one which was just marked as scarf yarn.

As some of you know I have recently been spinning my own yarn and have therefore needed to learn how to find out the weigh of yarn (ie is it DK, worsted, bulky etc). I discovered that this one was 8 wraps per inch (wpi) which is a bulky weight. The pattern calls for two strands of extra bulky in order for the basket to be stable but I thought I would give this one a go as I had it already.

Once I figured out what I was doing and how to work properly in the round this was actually quite fun to do, if a little hard on the hands as I was working with two strands. I think it came out quite well, though I am sure an experienced crocheter would see the all mistakes I am fairly sure I made.

Here in my basket you can see some of the skeins I have of my hand spun and plied yarn. I did add on a couple of rows before the handles to make mine a little deeper and I changed the way I started mine as well to make it a little easier for me but all in all I think it looks quite good.

One other thing, here is a notebook that I decorated a few years ago using some craft papers and toppers. As I have a LARGE number of notebooks already I would like to send this to a new home. If you are interested in adopting this A5 size lined journal please say in a comment on this post. If more than one person is interested I will draw a random recipient.