Wild Hope Homestead

Last night I began knitting the baby cardigan. After just a few rows, I was thoroughly distracted by my egg basket, sitting there, looking at me. I set aside the cardigan project and gave in to the egg basket’s charms.

It all began last week. I found this wee wire basket in the potting shed and thought it would make a good egg collecting basket. After spray painting the storage drawers green my eye fell on the basket and I thought it could do with some paint too. I first found some wire to fashion a handle, then spray painted it green. Then it needed some sort of padding. It sat by the coffee table waiting for me to knit it some innards while I worked away on my slippers. When I started the baby cardigan I could just about feel its disappointment. So I figured I might as well just do it since it would just be a quick project…

I selected some 12 ply yarn from my stash that wouldn’t take too long to knit on 7mm needles and set about figuring out my own pattern to fit the basket. First, I made the base in the form of an i-cord with 4 stitches. This made a long cord that I coiled up and stitched together to fit in the bottom of the basket. Then I figured it needed some sides. Using circular needles I picked up stitches along the edge and knitted the sides in stocking stitch, increasing as I went to allow for the widening sides of the basket. This was pretty much guesswork but I’m happy to say I somehow nailed it the first time. Sweet. For a bit of contrast I did the edge as four rounds of garter stitch in some of the DROPS Eskimo yarn left over from my slippers. I am totally stoked that the size worked out so nicely and I didn’t have to do any unpicking!

Not only have I created a sweet, soft egg basket, but I have also incidentally created my first written-down pattern. I shall write it out properly later on in case anyone’s interested. Obviously, things would need to be adjusted for different-sized baskets but I think having basic instructions there could be useful to others. Now, to gather some eggs…