Since my previous post on crochet baskets, I’ve made a bunch more.
Another Rainbow Basket
First up! I made a smaller version of the rainbow basket. It’s the same as the larger one except for size – simply single crochet in a spiral with a sort of rolled edge. I love how its color pattern is completely different from the larger one – striped instead of pooled into a sort of sand art look.
Bobble Stitch Tray
Next up, two baskets that lived in my crochet bag for a long time. The one shown twice above is more of a tray since its edges were both time-consuming and yarn-eating. I started with three worsted-weight yarns held together and made a simple single crochet bottom in joined rounds. When that was as large as I wanted, I made a round of 4-dc bobble stitch in every other stitch; I also chained 1 in between each pair of bobbles. In retrospect I may have been better off skipping the chains, because I needed to then go around with slip stitch (one per bobble and one in between each pair of bobbles) to keep it from splaying outward. I did one more bobble round with a slip stitch round afterward, making each bobble between two bobbles of the previous round and enclosing the slip stitch in between. Finally I did a round of crab stitch, making one stitch between each pair of bobbles of the last round, also enclosing the final slip stitch round. This is a very sturdy basket/tray.
Weird Coiled Dish
The second piece ended up more of a dish than a bowl or basket or tray. I made a long strip of single crochet, four or five stitches across (I’ve already forgotten). I then coiled it into a bowl by folding it over to make turns and single-crocheting from the back to join each new round to the previous. This dish would need stiffening to be used as such; it was very floppy and did not want to hold its shape. It was interesting as an experiment and not terribly time-consuming, though.
Two More Catchalls
I made another “trefoil catchall” in a color scheme I described as “pine and olive oil” (trefoil catchall pattern). I finished the tray with crab stitch in every stitch, which gave it a sort of wrapped or bound-edge appearance.
The other new item shown above is a double tray, made figure-8 style. You can see that in the way the lip of one dish curves outward and the other inward. I made two disks separately for the bases, and after completing the first round of the side of one dish, I immediately went around the second dish. At the end of the full double round I slip-stitched into the starting stitch. In the next round I ignored the slip stitch, single-crocheting into each sc of the previous round, and so forth. The slip stitches in the middle didn’t seem to add any height to that spot, which was perfect.
Spike Stitch Basket
Finally, I made a basket using spike stitch. I was interested in a scarf I found on Ravelry where you single crochet with light yarn around super bulky yarn – kind of a crochet couching technique – but I did not have yarn on hand with weights different enough to get the effect. Instead I alternated rounds of single crochet with worsted-weight yarn and rounds of alternating sc and spike stitch with sport weight yarn: worsted, sport color A, worsted, sport color B. At first I wished I’d had a darker and/or more saturated purple to contrast with the gold and dark-but-undersaturated green, but what originally struck me as a washed-out color scheme now makes me think of excavated antiquities.
The base is joined rounds of single crochet with all three yarns held together; I made it with a slightly larger hook than the sides. The first two rounds of spike stitch are made into the last base round, and after that each spike stitch is made into the previous round of the same color. The two colors of spike stitches are offset, so one color yarn begins rounds with sc and the other with spike. I finished with a round of the worsted and then (guess what!) crab stitch, in every other stitch, with all three colors held together.
If I make another one of these I need a better way to carry the yarns up to later rows at the joining spot. In this one I made the joining slip stitch with all three yarns and that was too chunky – there’s a sort of wobble down the outside edge along the join because it’s taller than the rest of the side.
You may or may not recall I was making some of the crochet baskets, plus the coiled fabric bowls, for a craft sale. Our overall sales were significantly down from previous years, but the larger sewn bowls did sell. The smaller bowls and the crochet items (all of which were on the smaller side as well) did not. Perhaps larger crochet baskets would sell, but I’m not sure I have the dedication to make them for sale…