Egg Baskets

My daughter was looking for small baskets for the children to use for collecting eggs from their chickens. I have long wanted to try knitting and felting small bowls or baskets so thought I'd have a go at using up the left-over bits of Murano wool in an egg-basket experiment. I had three partial balls in different colours.
I checked out a few patterns to get the guist of it, then worked it out as I went along. I constructed a base that was roughly circular - began with 20 stitches on straight needles, increased one at the beginning of each row to 30 stitches, knitted 10 rows straight, then decreased one per row to 20.

I then swapped to a circular needle and picked up about 26 stitches down each side and 20 at the starting end.

Of course, I had to factor in the 'lean' of Murano. It is possible to use it to make patterns!


I knitted in the round until it was about one and a half times the height I wanted to end up with, then put two sets of 5 stitches on to stitch holders and cast-off the remaining stitches. I used the two sets of five stitches to knit I-cords which I joined to the other side as handles.


I was tempted to only do one handle, but thought the top might gape and the eggs fall out.


I then knitted up a second one, slightly smaller.



As there was still wool left over, I thought I'd keep going and experiment with even smaller ones with a single handle. After all, I might as well felt four together!


I began the smaller bases with 15 stitches, increased to 22, knit 10 rows before decreasing.


They still seemed fairly roomy inside and one handle looked as if it might be adequate. I did not need to combine my bits of Murano wool - each bag came out of a the remains of one of my balls - knitted as it came in term of colour.






At the end, however, I did manipulate my remaining scrap to get an orange edge on the final basket.








This is all the wool I had left when I finished.




Here are my four Murano egg baskets ready to be felted.