Knit a Basket to Use Up Some Stash

Baskets are a perennial trend in home decor, but especially this time of year when we’re all trying to get a little more organized.

With this pattern for a geometric basket from purl3agony, you can use up some of your yarn stash to make a place to store other things (maybe tiny balls of yarn?).

It uses two different kinds of yarn in her version, but you could always make stripes to use up odd balls if you want. A plastic bowl in the bottom gives it stability, and you could work the same kind of project in different sizes to suit different needs and cover different sized containers.

The base is worked in one piece from the center out, then the sides are picked up and worked in the round, which makes it easy to adjust the size.

Do you have any knit baskets? What do you use them for? I have a giant crocheted basket that’s more like a bag because the sides are floppy that’s always full of some kind of kid stuff. It’s great!

[Photo via purl3agony.]

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One great thing to knit when the weather is warm (or honestly any other time) is dishcloths and washcloths. They are fun and easy projects and a great way to play with new skills. Pretty washcloths make cleaning a tiny bit more fun, and they’re great to have on hand as a quick addition to a store-bought gift.

The Daisy Delight Dishcloth from Yarnspirations is a fun one for using leftover bits of green in your cotton yarn stash. What looks like the bottom in the picture is actually the left side as you knit it, and each little color section is worked with its own ball of yarn, intarsia style.

That’s a little fiddly for a washcloth, but the effect is cute, and it’s a simple way to learn the basics of intarsia knitting (as well as reading a chart) if you don’t already have those skills.

One the knitting is done, you add the flowers with a bit of lazy daisy embroidery, which is really easy to do even if you’re not that into embroidery. You could also potentially add flowers in duplicate stitch if you’d rather.

This may be the most work you’ve put into a dishcloth, but isn’t it adorable? It would be fun to use as a hand towel through the spring and summer, and if you already have some leftover green yarn from other projects it should be pretty easy to do.

You could also take this same concept and make it different colors. All dark green stems with stars on top might be reminiscent of Christmas trees, or brown with daisy stitch on top in different colors could be trees in the fall.

However you stitch it, this looks like a fun little project for knitters who are comfortable with intarsia and reading charts or who are ready to try those skills.

You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.

[Photo: Yarnspirations]

Book Review – Dishcloths for Special Days [Knitting]

Book Review – Holiday Knit Dishcloths

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