Book Club: At the Water’s Edge {Part 2}

Book Club with text

Here are the rest of my answers to the Book Club questions for At the Water’s Edge. My answers to the first five questions are here. As with the first post of this nature, a spoiler alert is in effect.

 6. How did you feel about Hank? Did he evolve during the course of the novel, or did his character remain the same?

Hank was okay. Much better than Ellis. I think perhaps he was as swept up in Ellis’s overbearing personality as Maddie was. Despite the fact that going to Scotland was Hank’s idea, I don’t think he would have made the trek without Ellis (and Maddie). Therefore, I think Hank was mostly harmless. As for whether he changed over the course of the novel, that’s a bit trickier. I’m not sure. If he did, I think it was for the better. The more I work through my thoughts here, the more I think perhaps he came to see Ellis for the monster he really was rather than Hank himself changing.

7. The idea for At the Water’s Edge came to Sara Gruen during a visit she took to Scotland. She became fascinated by the ruins of old castles, the wild beauty of nature, and the Scottish history and folklore. Discuss the role that the atmosphere and landscape of Scotland play in the novel.

Scotland is pretty important to the novel. After all, it is a story about the search for the Loch Ness monster. But beyond that, I think the setting – specifically the wilderness and ruins – play a role, specifically in two scenes that come to mind. The first one is when Maddie wanders the forest and comes across a ruined castle that is home to the Scottish military. That’s a powerful scene in her character development. The second is actually in the prologue, not the story proper. The banks of Loch Ness are the sad scene of a suicide, that of the first wife of one of the main characters. Without her suicide, this character wouldn’t be available the way he is later in the novel.

8. Discuss the evolution of Maddie and Angus’s relationship. What were some of Angus’s qualities that Maddie grew to most admire? At what point do you think she realized she loved him?

Maddie and Angus’s relationship starts out rocky to say the least. He’s the innkeeper at the hotel the trio live at during their stay in Scotland. He has a rough personality; the first time we meet him, there’s no indication that anything will happen with him at all. But as Hank and Ellis spend more and more time away from the inn, leaving Maddie behind during their search for the monster, she and Angus spend more time together, thus showing more of his personality to the reader. I think some of his best qualities, those that Maddie probably noticed as she got to know him, were his caring nature and his protectiveness over the women at the inn. As for when Maddie realized she loved him, I’m not really sure. I was caught off guard by that particular revelation, so I can’t really say for certain when I think Maddie, as the narrator, realized it herself.

9. At the Water’s Edge explores humanity at its most base, as well as its most noble. Can you give some examples of both from the story? In the end, what kind of statement do you think Gruen makes about human nature?

I think the easiest way to explore this question is with specific examples of individual characters. Ellis, obviously, is one of the worst in the novel, and the example of “humanity at its most base.” His substance abuse and selfishness are the kinds of things that show human nature at its worst. Another example is when one character beats another one in a show of domestic abuse.

The most noble are clearly Maddie and Angus. While not entirely virtuous (they engage in an extramarital affair while Ellis is away), their hearts are in the right place (regarding other things) and we see in the epilogue just how noble they are.

I don’t like to apply motive to authors; I wasn’t in Ms. Gruen’s head while she wrote this book, so I can’t say for certain what she thinks about human nature. It could be something as simple as “some people are good and others really, really aren’t.”

10. Before she gets to Scotland, Maddie has only Hank and Ellis as friends. How do the female friendships she develops in Scotland shape her in new ways?

Anna and Meg (the “female friends” mentioned in this question) are vital to Maddie’s character development. Without them, I don’t think she could have morphed the way she did. She needed the harshness they provided at the beginning (no one in the inn approved of the trio of monster hunters because they all remembered the disaster caused by Ellis’s father years before) in order to begin pushing her to see Ellis for what he really was. As she got to know them better, they softened toward her and eventually the three become good friends. Despite this softening, they’re there to keep her moving on the right trajectory, as well.

So there we go – my answers to the book club questions of At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen. I haven’t decided yet whether my next one will be The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) or The Martian by Andy Weir. i have a copy of Vacancy which I’ve started, but thus far I’m not impressed by it. The Martian is one I’d have to buy (on Kindle, probably) or get from the library, but we saw the movie – which was amazing – and that makes me want to read the book. So we’ll see.

Blessings,

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5 Random Things ~ Science and Crafting

5 random things

Another week, another round of 5 random things 🙂

1. I recently found that the science curriculum we’ve been using, Visual Learning Systems (which I reviewed last year and thought was expiring last month), is good through 2019. Woohoo!

2. I’ve been working on embroidering some flour sack towels to use in our kitchen lately. I like how they’re turning out (so far, I’m not quite done with the first one, otherwise I’d post a picture), but I was quite surprised by the loose weave of the towel. I’ve never used or had flour sack towels before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t that. I like them nonetheless, though. They work very well in the kitchen (I know because Will’s grandma is also embroidering us a set as a belated Christmas gift and she sent one as a “sample” in time for Christmas which we’ve been using).

3. I’ve also been crocheting a bit again. It’s nice to have time to make some crafts now that the baby is a bit older and doesn’t need to be held all the time (I love holding him, but it’s nice to get a break occasionally). I found some 100% Peruvian wool yarn in the exact shade of my pink sweater, so I made a hat for myself. The pattern is one that I hodge-podged myself from a few different ideas, so I’ll post about it, with the pattern, next week probably.

4. The store where I bought the yarn does “How to Knit” and “How to Crochet” classes. So long as you buy the supplies from them (yarn and needles/hooks), the class is free. (It’s $20 if you bring your own supplies from other stores, which is about the cost of just buying them from the store, so that’s what I’m going to do.) The knitting one is on Valentine’s Day, so I’m hoping to be able to take that class. I don’t think I need a crocheting class, but I’d love to learn to knit.

5. I can’t think of a 5th thing. I guess it hasn’t been a very exciting week!

Have a great weekend!

Blessings,

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Book Club: At the Water’s Edge (Part 1)

Book Club with text

For Christmas, I received from Will a paperback copy of the book At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen. I was familiar with another of her books (Water for Elephants, which I really enjoyed), so I was excited to read this new one by an author whose work I knew I already liked. At that time (Christmas), I was in the middle of another book, so I had to finish it before I dove into this one. But I was so looking forward to this one that I finished the other quickly so I could begin reading soon.

The copy of the book that I have is the “Random House Reader’s Circle” edition, which means it includes questions for a book club in the back. Since I’m not a member of a book club, I decided that I’d work through those answers myself here on the blog. (As a side note, I’m going to try to make the Book Club a monthly feature here. That will keep me reading as well as give me food for thought on the books I read rather than being a passive “traveler” on those journeys.) There are 10 questions, and they’re pretty involved, so I’m going to break them up into two posts. But first, let me tell you about the book – just in case you haven’t read it.

From the back cover:

In January 1945, when Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a retired army colonel who is ashamed of  his son’s inability to serve [militarily], Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed where the Colonel very publicly failed – by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster. Leaving her sheltered world behind, Maddie reluctantly follows Ellis and his best friend, Hank, to a remote village in the Scottish Highlands. Gradually, the friendships Maddie forms with the townspeople open her up to a larger world than she knew existed. Maddie begins to see that nothing is as it first appears, and as she embraces a fuller sense of who she might be, she becomes aware not only of darker forces around her but of life’s surprising possibilities.

Because of the nature of this post, I must declare a Spoiler Alert.

1. The novel takes place during World War II. Is the war setting a distraction or does it contribute to the success of the novel? Would changing the time frame change the meaning of the novel? How did the austerity of the times affect Maddie, who was used to a life of luxury?

I think the was setting was a huge contribution to the novel. The changes that happened within Maddie, the main character, wouldn’t have been as rich without that setting behind it. That setting was necessary to push her into experiencing the things she did. I think changing the time setting would cause problems in the execution of the story. 

The austerity of the times affect Maddie in ways that I don’t think even she expected. She got to see first hand the horrors of war. She experienced the fear of spending time in a bomb shelter during air raids. She met soldiers, without whom she might never have truly understood what was going on around her, despite her location. All of these experiences contribute to the character she becomes by the epilogue.

2. “What I learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually hiding in plain sight.” Monsters come in all different forms in At the Water’s Edge. What are some of the monsters in the novel? How are they different from what you might expect?

There are two obvious answers to the first question: “Nessie” (though that name never makes it into the book) and Ellis.

The Loch Ness monster is obviously a main element in the book because without it – or the idea of it, anyway – Maddie, Hank, and Ellis would never have traveled to Scotland. If they hadn’t traveled to Scotland, the story that happened would never had taken place in their lives.

Ellis is a monster because of his chemical dependencies. His addiction to prescription painkillers and alcohol make him so frightening because you (the reader) and Maddie (the main character) never know which version of him you’re going to get. That can be the scariest kind of monster, I think.

There are minor monsters in the book as well. Rory, one of the Canadian lumberjacks in town as a soldier, is a monster who represents domestic violence. World War II is a monster. Even the monster of suicide makes an appearance.

As for how they’re different than what the reader might expect, that varies between the two. With the Loch Ness monster, it’s different because it seems to almost “know” a person’s intentions when they visit the Loch. (I’m going with the assumption here that the monster in the story is real.) It treats Hank and Ellis very differently than it treats Maddie, therefore making it not such a “monster” after all. With Ellis, the fact that he’s a monster at all is unexpected. He starts the novel as a carefree, fun husband for Maddie. By the end, he’s so awful that you kind of hope Maddie goes through with Meg and Anna’s (her Scottish friends) suggestion to poison him (but only in a “he’s an awful fictional character” kind of way – I’d never feel this way about a real person, no matter how awful they were).

3. Throughout At the Water’s Edge, Maddie transforms from a woman who is spoiled, naive, and helpless to one who is brave and capable. What and who are the major influences that led her to change? What are the biggest lessons Maddie learns throughout the course of the novel?

Ironically, I think perhaps Ellis (her husband) is the catalyst for Maddie’s transformation, at least indirectly. If he hadn’t dragged her to Scotland, she never would have met Meg, Anna, and Angus (the staff at the inn where they stay). If he hadn’t left her there for days on end several times during the course of the novel, she never would have developed relationships with those characters. And those relationships, along with her seeing the affects of the war with her own eyes, are the major influences leading to her change.

I think the biggest lesson she learns is compassion. As the question states, she begins the novel spoiled and naive. By the end – honestly by just a few chapters in, when they get off the boat in Scotland – she’s already learning compassion and caring, especially for people who have been hurt, in the war or otherwise.

4. Discuss the novel’s ambiguity concerning the supernatural. How does Sara Gruen blend mystical elements into the narrative’s realism? Did Ellis and Hank find the Loch Ness monster after all?

The blend of the supernatural (ghosts and the Loch Ness monster) into the “reality” of the characters’ lives is lovely and seamless. Maddie experiences the lack of supernatural during her “workday” at the loch with Hand and Ellis. Fully expecting to see the monster, she jumps and shouts at every little thing, and none of them turn out to be the monster. But then, when she least expects it, during a non-working trip to the water, something pushes her out of it. Is it the monster? Is it Mairi, Angus’s wife who committed suicide in the loch three years before? We, and Maddie, never find out for certain.

As for Ellis and Hank finding the monster, I don’t think they did – and not just because it’s a fictional monster. I think they truly believed perhaps they would find it, but the scene near the end of the novel where they have a model they’ve built based on locals’ stories that they’re getting ready to film tells me that they never saw the real monster.

5. Do you think Maddie and Ellis were ever truly in love? What did you think of Ellis? Did you empathize with him? Did Ellis change over the course of the novel or did the changes all take place within Maddie?

I think Maddie was in love with Ellis, but I don’t think he ever returned the sentiment. I think she was just convenient for him. He needed her in order to prove to his parents that he was independent and didn’t need their approval anymore. He liked her, sure, but their marriage was all about him.

My thoughts of Ellis changed over the course of the book. In the beginning, he seemed fine. I had no reason to suspect that he would end up as awful as he did. Did I empathize with him? No, not really, especially as I learned more and more about him. Ellis was a self-centered, drug-abusing jerk. No empathy from me, not even during his final scene.

I don’t think Ellis changed as the story progressed. The changes were definitely all within Maddie. It may seem like Ellis changed, but that was only because as Maddie became more aware of the things around her, she saw him for what he really was.

I’ll be back next week with my thoughts to other five Book Club questions on this novel.

Blessings,

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Caring for Vinyl Records

The Proper Care of Vinyl Records

After reading my post on why we switched to vinyl records, Will thought it might be good to do a followup on the proper way to care for them. So here we are.

Disclaimer: We’re pretty new to vinyl records ourselves, so this list probably isn’t comprehensive. It’s just things we’ve learned and observed in our weeks of record playing.

There aren’t that many rules in regards to vinyl records, but there are a couple. And the better care you take of your vinyl records, the longer they’ll last and therefore, the longer you’ll enjoy them.

Stack your records vertically, not in a pile.

If you pile your records up, they’re likely to warp from the weight of themselves. You should treat records like a hardback book. We keep ours on a small shelf with hardback books, in fact. Then we lean one of the books (not a record) to keep the vinyls upright.

Clean all albums regularly. When buying used, clean them before playing.

You’ll need to buy a specialty cleaning kit to do this. It costs about $20 and comes with a record cleaning brush, cleaning solution, and a small brush with which to clean your brush.

Records attract static electricity, which in turn attracts dust. This means that you’ll need to clean your records periodically. Information on how often varies from site to site; some say to clean them with each play, and others say to clean them only when they look dusty. And there are a myriad of other options in between. Since there’s no right or wrong answer here (apparently), use your best judgement.

Make sure your kids understand the cost of a record.

This might seem like an obvious one, but it’s as important as any of the others on this list. Records are tough, but they’re not indestructible. They can be broken, bent, warped, and otherwise destroyed. Teach your children the proper care of them and pass along the love of records! We’ve done this by allowing each of our children to purchase a record (we paid for it, up to $10, then they paid anything over if they wanted something more expensive) that was theirs. They’re taught how to play the record and how to put it away. They’re taught how to clean it. Basically, they are in charge of their own record. Having one that belongs to them personally gives them some sense of ownership, and therefore they care more about it.

Have good dust sleeves. Paper is better than plastic.

Moving the records in and out of plastic sleeves will attract even more static than the records do anyway, so paper sleeves are better. All new records will come with dust sleeves, and most used ones will as well. With used records, though, the sleeves may not be in very good condition, so you might have to buy new ones. Our record store sells them for $5.95 for a 24-pack.

They can get cold, but too hot and they melt.

Records are basically made from plastic, so this is a no-brainer. Don’t leave them in direct sunlight or put them in your oven ;). In all seriousness, though, over about 90 degrees F and you’ll have problems. So if your house gets really hot in the summertime, you’ll need to find a safe place to store your records during those months.

Avoid thrift stores.

This doesn’t mean don’t buy used records. It means buy them from official record stores when you do. And I heartily recommend buying used records. You’re likely to find some real gems in the used section of the record store that you’d never ever be able to get new. It’s definitely worth buying used, but you want to buy them from someone who knows about records rather than someplace where people just dump their excess, broken, warped records and employees don’t know the difference between a good one and one that no longer plays. Most of these types of stores (the good ones, not the bad ones) have a quality scale for their used records. Pay attention to that scale, and only buy records from the top two tiers of quality. Definitely never buy the “as is” records – even from a record store, that’s no better than a regular thrift store.

When handling records, treat them like a photograph.

When you look at a record up close, you’ll notice that there’s a rim along the outside edge that’s thicker – almost like a pizza crust. There are no grooves here, and therefore no music. This is where you want to hold your records when moving them from their cases to the player and back again.

Vinyl records are a lot of fun. By following these simple guidelines,  you’ll prolong the life of your records, assuring that you can enjoy to them for years to come.

Happy Listening!

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Homeschooling Essentials: Flexibility (Throwback)

Homeschooling Essentials Flexibility

Two years ago, I did a series on what I thought were the essentials of homeschooling. I thought it might be interesting today to take a look back at one of those posts and see what, if anything I’d change. Here’s the original article:

You have to be flexible to be a homeschooling parent. Things don’t always go exactly the way you planned, and that has to be okay. There are unexpected sick days (for the kids and you), last minute errands (or days of errands…), and burnout days. You have to be flexible enough to let things go and say, “There’s always tomorrow.”

Earlier this month, we had half a week of the need to be flexible. Right around New Year’s, Small Fry was sick. I think it was New Year’s Eve, actually. He was just feeling puny and was not himself, and finally, about an hour before bedtime, it became clear why when he threw up all over me (sorry if that’s TMI…). That was on a Wednesday. Thursday was normal, and on Friday, Munchkin was sick with the same thing. He spent the day in bed, but was fine the next morning. But that morning, Seahawk was under the weather and slept most of the day. Sunday of that week, the day before I’d planned to start school up again, was fine. We went for a family bike ride and all was well. During the night, though, I came down with the illness. Here’s where the need to be flexible really struck. Even though it was Monday, and the day we were “supposed” to get back to school, there was no school happening with Mom stuck in bed. Let me also say, I am incredibly blessed to have a husband who’s self-employed and works (mostly) from home. He was able to take that Monday (which happened to be our anniversary) off to take care of the kids so I could sleep and recover. Enter Flexibility Day 2: Tuesday. We’d missed school on Monday, and because we’d also missed our anniversary, we took Tuesday off from school, too. The kids spent the morning with Grandma so hubby and I could have our anniversary date. (We went to see Saving Mr. Banks. Have you seen it? Very good. I don’t even care for Mary Poppins and I liked Mr. Banks. In fact, hubby’s been reading the book Mary Poppins aloud to the kids this weekend. Then we’re going to watch the movie, and on Tuesday, which is discount day at the cinema, we’re all going to see Saving Mr. Banks again.) Anyway. So we started school on Wednesday the 8th instead of Monday the 6th. And did anyone die? Nope. Because we understand the importance of being flexible.

Now, this is not to say that you can call yourself a homeschooler and just never “do” school with your kids. There has to be a balance, and I think it’s better to err on the side of more school days than less. The education has to happen, whether you’re at home or sending your kids to school. But you have to accept that things aren’t always perfect.

Outside of the time-sensitive portions of the post, I think what I wrote are still applicable to every day life for homeschoolers. In order to keep your sanity, you have to have some flexibility. We need to do what works for our particular families, within the confines of state law for where we live. If you live in a state with attendance laws, make sure you’re falling within those guidelines. Are your laws more along the lines of “show us what you did”? Then do that. So long as you’re not risking getting into trouble with the local government, there’s really no right or wrong way to homeschool your children.

Take us, for example. We don’t have attendance laws, so I don’t stress (too much) over which days we do school. About a year ago, in fact, we switched from a 5-day-a-week schedule to a 4-day-a-week one. It’s better for all of us this way. It allows us a day for errands (doctor’s appointments, haircuts, banking, grocery shopping…) and also gives me an extra day each week for prep work. This extra day for preparation means I don’t have to do that work on Sundays, which gives our family a better Sabbath experience each week.

Or when I had a baby two months ago. I knew going in that we’d have to have some flexibility around that time, so we adjusted the schedule to be able to take things easy during the final month of my pregnancy and off for several weeks after the baby was born. By not stressing over keeping a strict schedule, I was able to focus on recovering from my c-section and bonding with the baby rather than stressing over what was (or wasn’t) getting done, school-wise. I think that probably helped me to be able to recover better and faster.

Regardless of what it looks like for your particular family, flexibility – within certain parameters – is a must.

Blessings,

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This post is linked up with Throwback Thursday, Blog Style at Tots and Me… Growing Up Together.

 

Tots and Me

Why We Quit Listening to CDs (and mp3s)

Why We Quit Listening to CDs framed

I lightly touched on the fact that we’ve been listening to vinyl records instead of CDs or mp3s recently (in a 5 Random Things post). Today, I want to discuss the Whys of that decision and what we’ve learned/observed in the weeks since we switched.

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a music person. At all. I could easily give up music and not even think twice about it. I don’t like the oppressive feeling I get when it’s playing (especially in the car). I hate the inability to escape it when Will or the kids are listening to it in the house.

So when Will came home one day before Christmas with a record player, I was skeptical. For one thing, it would be a bigger item taking up space in the house. For another, because it was “new” and “different,” I knew they’d want to listen to music all the time. And finally, it seemed silly to me to have a new medium of playing music – specifically, one that didn’t work with the way we already owned music (mp3s, mostly). It would require us to buy – or rebuy – music, which wasn’t something I was all that interested in doing. But Will wanted the turntable, so he bought it. Along with one new record and a few used ones.

After just a few days of having the turntable, I was mostly a convert. Enough of one, anyway, for Will to decide he wanted another turntable – one for “me” to have upstairs (where the main living areas of our home are) and one for him to keep in his home office downstairs. So we went to the store to see what they had in the record-player category. (We knew they’d have something because it was the same store where he’d purchased the first one. It was just a matter of seeing what more/other options they had since it’d been a couple of weeks.) When we got there, we found the player in the picture up above. We were taken aback by just how perfectly that one would complement our living room decor. We already had that blue table – with no real plan for what to do with it – and we knew that when we saw the blue-cased turntable that it belonged in our house. It was the only one in that color left, and a little more expensive than its black counterpart, but we wanted the blue one anyway. So we got it.

And now that we’ve had the permanent one for the living room for a few weeks, I can honestly say that I am a full convert now. And here’s why.

There’s a bit of “ceremony” with each play of a record.

You can’t just scroll through your digital catalog and start the music with the tap of a button. You have to very deliberately choose what you want to listen to, remove it from its sleeve, place it on the turntable, turn the player on, and place and drop the needle. While it’s not a complex process, it is a process, and it’s not something you just decide to do willy-nilly.

When you forget about the background music, it will eventually end.

This is a big one for me. Remember before, when I said that I don’t really like music because it’s difficult to get away from when someone else is listening to it? Well, a big part of that is because with CDs and mp3s, the player will oftentimes just keep going and going and going forever and ever until you (or someone else) eventually realizes that it’s still playing and turn it off. This isn’t the case with a record. With a record, you get about 5 songs – 20 or 25 minutes – max. Then it stops. It doesn’t stop spinning, but it stops playing when the needle gets to the middle of the record. And then you have to make a conscious choice to restart the music. This is perfect for someone who likes music in small pieces rather than as constant background noise.

Will likened it to the difference between watching a movie and turning the TV on in the morning and leaving it on in the background of you life until you go to bed each night. We are definitely “movie” people (we do watch TV shows, but we do so in a movie-like way, by choosing what to watch and when – thanks to streaming services – rather than being roped into the network schedules). Our TV spends more time off than on, and we like it that way. A record player is the same. You have to decide to listen to something. It’s not a medium that lends itself to constant, repeating tracks.

The musical choices are different.

This might be more of a con than a pro to some people, but not to us. The musical choices available when you listen exclusively (or almost exclusively) to vinyl, the choices are very different. Some of the new artists release their music on vinyl (I’ve seen Adele and Taylor Swift records in the record store, as well as David Bowie’s new release, among others), but not all of it. And there was a time in the 90s when, apparently, none of the music was released on vinyl. (That’s pure supposition on my part. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’ve not seen any albums from that time frame in our searches.) Very little Christian music is available on vinyl.

But lots of music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and earlier are available. So that’s what we mostly listen to these days. Some of our favorites that we’ve found and purchased used are Famous Marches of John Philip Sousa, The Nutcracker Suite, Rossini Overtures, and The Wizard of Oz soundtrack. These are things that you’d probably be pretty hard pressed to find on CD. Someplace like Amazon probably has them on mp3, but given a choice between Sousa and Adele, what would you choose? Most people would pick Adele. But that’s not necessarily the case with records. You choose things that you might not otherwise select if the choices were the same.

So, this is why we’ve given up on CDs and mp3s (for the most part). There’s a lot more I could (and will) write about the act of owning records, but this post is already pretty long, so I’ll save that for another day. 🙂

Blessings,

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Crochet Round Basket (free pattern)

KIMG0216

KIMG0213I was recently in the “market” for a free crochet pattern for a basket. I was unable to find quite what I was looking for, so I used my hat making skills to design my own. To be fair, even though I didn’t find an exact pattern for something I liked, I was able to glean tips from some of them that made my basket better than it would have been had I embarked on this mission without looking for patterns. So there’s that.

This basket is made using two strands of yarn held together and crocheted as one. By doing this, you get both an interesting look to your basket (especially if you choose different colors) and a bit more strength. And crocheting with two strands together is much easier than using thicker yarn in the first place – I’m not sure why, but I found it a nicer way to work.

I like how versatile this pattern is. Though I’ve included instructions for one the height of what I made, you can easily make it bigger or smaller by including more or fewer increase rounds. You can make it taller by adding more rounds after you’re done increasing but before you get to the handles; similarly, you can make it shorter by crocheting fewer rounds. Super simple.

Since I created this myself, I’m comfortable sharing the pattern. I hope you enjoy it.

Using 2 strands of worsted weight (normal) yarn held together:

KIMG0214Magic Ring; chain 2

Round 1: 11 DC inside magic ring. Join with slip stitch. Chain 2.

Round 2: 2 DC in each DC (22 DC). Join. Chain 2.

Round 3: 2 DC in first DC, one DC in next DC, repeat around (33 DC). Join. Chain 2.

Round 4: 2 DC in first DC, one DC in next two DC, repeat around (44 DC). Join. Chain 2.KIMG0215

Round 5: 2 DC in first DC, one DC in next three DC, repeat around (55 DC). Join. Chain 2.

Round 6: 2 DC in first DC, one DC in next four DC, repeat around (66 DC). Join. Chain 2.

Rounds 7-12: DC in each stitch around (66 DC). Join. Chain 2.

Round 13: (To make handle): DC in first 9 DC, ch 17, DC in next 17 DC (connect it to the 18th stitch), ch 17, DC to end.

Round 14: DC in each stitch around.

Tie off. Weave in ends.

I hope I’ve made this clear enough. If you try making this basket and run into problems, please leave a comment, and I’ll try to help.

Blessings,

ladybug-signature-3 copy

 

 

This post is part of the Schoolhouse Review Crew’s roundup on crafts. That post will go live on Friday, March 4th, 2016.

Crafts / Handiwork Ideas and Tutorials