Home Made Christmas is finally revealed!

basket case

Christmas 2017

I've fallen tragically behind with all blogging so this is a quick post about the Christmas homemade presents. This year I happened upon some reduced yarn in the local Boyes shop. The yarn is a sort of  'net' like composition which is typically used to make frilly scarves but was absolutely fantastic as a super chunky yarn to make sturdy little baskets. The best bit about it was that it has a sparkle and so perfect for little christmassy baskets! All in all I made 21 of the blessed things, so was quite glad when it was all done and wrapped. I did make use of the  frill potential on a few of the baskets - I was desperate for a bit of variation!

Crochet basket

Another holiday and another crochet project. This actually was a bit of an impromptu crochet job as some yarn in a bin box called to me when I was guarding the bikes whilst waiting outside the fish and chip shop. You know how it goes, it's bank holiday weekend and you are just standing around not wanting to go too far (we hadn't taken bike locks), and the yarn shop is very close to the chippy, and the sale basket is just there and there is some interesting yarn at a great price. It was meant to be. I then had to come up with an idea for 3 balls of superbulky yarn which recommended 15mm needles for knitting. Whoppers then. However, since I happened to have all my crochet hooks with me :) I chose a 10mm hook and made a start straight away. I ended up undoing my first effort as whilst it was making a pretty sturdy fabric I wanted to make something that would stand up on it's own and could be used as a bin liner or similar so the following day I went shopping for a plastic bin or bag of some sort and saw the perfect item; a plastic flexi bag.

Now I had something to work around for size.  All went swimmingly well until I ran out of pink super bulky yarn with not much hope of getting some more. You see how my projects escalate? So, back to the yarn shop (The Mill in Sutton on Sea) for something to improvise with to finish the basket. I ended up buying 3 balls of chunky yarn to ply together to make the right thickness. It was a bit too thick with 3 strands but this actually worked in my favour because the flexi bag was wider at the top than the bottom so I didn't need to do any shaping. Anyway, it was finished in quite short order with a bit of a flower embellishment to finish off the pink wool. Now I have a lovely crocheted basket that I'm not really sure what to do with. At the moment it is holding my current patterns, books and projects and being both useful and stylish! Just in case it looks like I spent all my holiday crocheting I can confirm that I did a lot of cycling and walking too (and some embroidery, but that is another story)!