How to Crochet a Basket

Today marks the one week anniversary of my starting to crochet. In that time, I've made this basket, two gifts that I don't want to spoil by posting here yet, and I've started a hat for myself. I like crocheting so much better than knitting .. I can keep track of what I'm doing easier, the instructions seem clearer in patterns, and I'm not constantly dropping stitches. It's almost instant gratification. For this basket, I did have to restart three times to get it to look right, but it was worth it. On one of the gifts I made, I pulled out almost 400 stitches to restart, and it ended up looking great (although it's smaller than it should have been). I guess what I'm saying is that I'm learning as I go. It's fun teaching myself through blogs; there are a lot of good ones out there!

For the basket, I followed this blog's tutorial on how to begin the basket and increase the stitches to make a circle. For her basket, she added a stripe and kept the basket low, but I wanted a taller basket to store my embroidery supplies in. So, if you want to make a basket like mine, once you get done increasing your seventh row to 84 stitches, start the eighth row crocheting with one double stitch per stitch (no more increasing). After two or three rows, you should see the sides of the basket curling up. Total, including the seven rows of the bottom circle, my basket has 22 rows (seven increasing on the bottom plus fifteen normal double stitching). Hope you enjoy making a basket as much as I did! It turned out really cute for a first project.