Completed Pine basket.

March 6, 2012

 

I have completed the first of the two commissioned Pine needle baskets.  I was asked to duplicate the one I did for my sister...you know, the one I forgot to take pictures of before I gifted it to her.

So here is a picture of what it looked like, for the most part.  The center is Pine branch slice like hers, but the wrapped coil was the absolute first coil done.  I couldn't get it to work this time, so after days of effort and frustration, I just did a couple of rows of stitch work and then wrapped.

The russet is #10 mercerized cotton crochet thread double stranded and the dark brown is waxed linen.  I used closed coil wrapping, the v stitch and the fern stitch.  It has a 7 in. base and 2 in. tall sidewalls.

I absolutely love working with the waxed linen.  It is really too bad I can only find it in dark brown here in St. Augustine.  Even then I found it at the local Hobby Lobby, and as we all know I work at Michaels.  lol  None to be had there although we do have the artificial sinew aplenty.

Pics...From the top.

From the side...

From the bottom, believe it or not my signature and the date is signed on the back.  So sorry for the glare.  I wax the wooden center's and I couldn't get any better shot than this.  In this next one I also think you can see some of the green needles I like to incorporate.  I dry them in the house so that they retain their color.  I am told that with time they will turn brown, but kept out of direct sunlight the green lasts a very long time.

Still one more to go.  I think I might reverse the color of the threads next time.  Dark brown for the body and russet for the trim.  (I am a bit bored with these colors in general, I think this is the 5th basket using russet as my base color.  I am indeed looking forward to using another color when these two baskets are completed.)  The center will probably be Cedar.  Stay tuned folks, same bat time, same bat channel.  LOL