108: Something I made that I was REALLY proud of...

hey y'all,

i signed up for the crazy hip blog mamas ring. i've never been part of a ring before so i'm not exactly sure how it works. i'm still getting the gist of it. mostly i'm checking out the pages of other members. some of them are sooooooooo cool.

any way, i stumbled my way onto the actual crazy hip blog mamas blog and i saw that i've been missing out on good stuff. they have all kinds of fun things for us crazy hip mamas to participate in.

so here's where i get on: something i made that i was REALLY proud of.

i've been making baskets for about a year now. i found the directions online when i was looking for cool arts and crafts stuff that we could do as part of our home schooling activities. it would have to be relatively simple and easy stuff tho cuz although i read and write pretty darned good and i've always scored off the charts in reading comprehension and on all my standardized exams, somehow i can never quite follow the written directions for the crafty stuff i love to do.

i'm a hands-on person and i need someone to show me in person, so i can actually see what's going on. in that vein, a few friends have tried to teach me to knit over the years and even tho it's been up-close-and-personal instruction, i have yet to catch straight-needle fever.

i've been a crochet-er for over 30 years. and all my experience aside, i can count on one hand the number of items i've made that resemble the item in the picture. my finished products usually look like the fun house mirror version of what ever i was 'sposed to be making.

but i'm a persistent hooker. i continue to seek out patterns, hoping that one day i'll find one that will help me take the world by storm. i'll stitch up a pattern so intricate, it'll auction at sotheby's for 1.5 million . :-)

that was my dream.

my reality came with the baskets. i printed the directions, gathered my supplies and sat down to see if i could get a sample basket done before confusion set in.

my first basket was a bit of a mess but not too bad considering it was my first. my second and third baskets were better. then i began experimenting with the materials. the subsequent baskets are cute but lack the simplicity of the originals.

each basket is beautiful in a wabi-sabi sorta way.

each one is different in shape, design, or style. the basket decides which shape it wants to be as i work. the only thing i decide in advance is what color(s) the basket will be. -)

the yellow and brown basket is one of my earlier ones. being able to see the pattern is soothing, somehow.

the yarn i used for the later baskets was a fuzzy wuzzy kind. it comes in gorgeous colors but the fuzz obscures the wrap pattern in most of them.

this particular basket has a handle which wasn't part of the pattern. but some baskets thought they would look nicer with handles so i decided to add a few. it was trial and error getting a good handle technique down.

i guess making the basket qualifies as needlework cuz you need one of those big curved needles to wrap the yarn.

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