Basket Case!

Last week I was down south visiting the old, the sick, and the infirm (aka my family).  While I was there, sometimes with not much to do, I became something of a basket case.  Crocheted baskets!

Aren't the little handles adorable?

I blame my basket craze on Meredith at Mereknits.  Toward the end of August, she began posting pictures of a basket she had crocheted.  Yowza, I was hooked (sorry).  So I hopped on over to Crochet in Color, where Meredith got her pattern, and promptly downloaded the pattern for myself.

Last week I crocheted FOUR baskets.  You can really tell how poor my crochet skills are when I tell you that none of the four baskets turned out the same size or even quite the same shape!  I gave a mulberry-colored one to my mother, so I don't have pictures of it, but you can see what I mean with the picture of the other three.

No consistency at all!

The baskets are worked with a double strand of super bulky yarn.  For some reason, I had the most trouble with the beige basket.  The yarn is all the same brand, Yarn Bee Effortless Super Bulky, but the beige was "hairier" and my hook got caught more often.  Maybe that is why I hooked it tighter.  Another factor that made them different is that with the first one (far right), I accidentally hooked the sides from the inside out (working on the far edge of the basket rather than the side nearest me).  I don't know how I got that going, but I think that's what gave it the slightly bulbous shape.  The second basket (center) was made "correctly," or at least as correctly as I could do it.  It has straight sides.  Because I'd seen the bulbous one first, though, I kind of liked it better, so I made the third basket hooking the sides inside out again.

When I brought home my basket haul, the husband wondered what I am going to do with them.  I could see one in Florida holding sunscreen.  My brother suggested a smaller one with shorter sides as a place to throw car keys.  I'm not sure what will happen to these, but there is some gray Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick and Quick in my yarn bag waiting to be made into yet another basket!

I think I may be developing an addiction.

Chunky Hat

After making the Mackinaw hat (http://sweetposydreams.blogspot.com/2011/09/finished-object.html) a few weeks ago (which, by the way, is too big for my son and which my daughter said looks like cocker spaniel ears, nice!), I thought a scarf of the loop stitch I had just learned would be fun.  So I bought some super bulky wool blend gray yarn.  I played around with different variations of a loop stitch scarf, some of which were pretty cute, but ultimately decided it wasn't working for me.

So I frogged that and found a pattern for super bulky yarn on Ravelry, http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/big-button-hat, and made yet another hat.  How many hats does a girl need?  The only snag I ran into was finding size 11 double pointed needles.  I like the result, but I still have a skein and a third of super bulky gray yarn to use up.  Gift hat? Hmmm.