Making :: Crocheted Baskets

Using the material I prepare for rag rugs, and roughly the same process, I have crocheted a few fabric baskets in recent weeks. They are sturdy and functional and, in my mind, pretty charming. The round one that holds (about one third of) Scotty's block collection was made using a pile of crib sheets I'd been saving. I'm not much of a home decorator, so 5 or 6 well-loved sheets were exactly the inventory that got me through both sets of crib years. No matching crib bumpers, no themed bedroom sets, just whatever few had been given to me by thoughtful, more stylish friends than I, and they made an adorable basket in the end.

I made the rectangular basket for wood next to the fireplace. Our San Francisco springs are so mild that the fireplace mostly sleeps from now until mid-November or so.....but the weather here is just unpredictable enough that you'd be a fool not to keep something to burn close at hand. So the ugly yellow-wrapped fire logs are cute as a button cozied into their new home.

Another basket, the first one I made, was started on Easter, watching the kids run around Aunt Barbara's backyard. Originally intended to hold my mom's traditional Easter presents (the vegetable starts I give her for her garden every year), I couldn't quite finish the basket in the few hours we were there. She took her plants home in the cardboard boxes they came in, and I took the basket home and ended up using it every day since. As you do.

It's amazing how much this basket holds! Camera and extra lenses, lunches and snacks for school/work/baseball field, veggies from the farmers market, a family set of water bottles, my (empty) wallet and keys (somewhere buried in there, i swear, give me a second minute and I'll find them), my ever-present notebook(s), at least three baseballs, my mitt, and random squirt guns and sticks I'm holding onto for The Things. 


Seriously sturdy.