Baskets

Remember those crocheted baskets I was telling you about some months ago? The ones about which I was slightly obsessed, and the photos of which I promised to share but then misplaced because we're in a state of limbo regarding how to get them off the camera, edited and organized?

I found the photos! 

Elation!

(We still don't have a satisfactory solution for the managing photos, but whatever. Life must go on.) 

It began when, after finishing oodles of washcloths and an entire, wearable scarf, I beheld the leftover yarn and wondered what one might do with it all. Might they be given to the cats? (No - dangerous). Might they be amassed in a bag and turned into stuffing for softies? (No - too much like metaphorical intestines, thus icky). Might they be made into tiny amigurumi animals? (No - no patience). Might they languish in a tub in my sewing room, like my fabric scraps, waiting for my kids to have children of their own so that in the distant future, I might host a Let's Make Yarn Pictures crafting retreat with grandma? 

No. No. No.

So I asked the internet. And the internet suggested this tutorial. I'd never done crochet-in-the-round before, only rows and C2C, so I thought I'd try it. Plus, it's a circle, which is my favorite shape, so.

This was my first basket. It was essentially a bucket with a flat base and vertical walls, made with 4-6 strands of worsted-weight yarn (or the equivalent thickness of other gauge yarns together). It was fun to combine different colors of narrow yarn to make the distinct bands.

The handle, though, I thought was a bit squishy to get an adult's hand through.

So I made another basket. 

And added more stitches to the handles so the hand opening would be larger. I felt quite clever.

Until I realized that the arch, while gorgeously curvy in 2D, actually bowed outward.

See.

Which, had it been one's to make protruding handles originally, would have been a success, except I'd been going for a woven-carryall look, and sticky-out handles were Bad News.

Then I analyzed it and decided that this was because the two rows of the handle had identical numbers of stitches. And everyone who's done middle school geometry knows that those two rows have different radii of curvature, which means their circumferential arcs cannot be the same length. Which is fancy for "upper row must have more stitches than than lower row".

 

So I made a third basket. Full disclosure: by now, I had run out of yarn scraps that looked good together, so I had to go shopping for new yarn, which I knew would eventually produce even more leftovers, the irony of which didn't escape me, but I was obsessed and obsessed people have no common sense, only an inordinate fear of making things the color of vomit.

This was much better, I thought.

I made sure the upper row in the handle had more stitches than the lower,

to ensure the handle lay flat along the same plane as the wall of the basket.

Being on a roll, I made a fourth basket.

And justified it with needing to use up this ribbon yarn I'd bought years ago for no reason other than being pretty. 

Finally, I got bored making the same kind of basket and thought I'd try one with a curved bowl-shaped base. The rounds were crocheted as spirals, not distinct circles. I wasn't sure if that was why the thing seemed to be slightly skewed.

Regardless, I do love how cauldron-like it is.

Here's a different kind of handle - made separately and then attached to each side.

And now I'm done with baskets. They were a lot of fun to make, and I learned so much, but they were hard on one's hands because of the thickness of the combined yarn strand. As feared, I ended up with even more yarn (and leftovers) than before. But are we surprised, really? Have you seen my fabric stash? Or cardboard hoard?