After making the storage basket with chunky yarn, I wanted to experiment with other materials to get a stiffer fabric so I can make even bigger baskets!  I do have a tendency to go a bit mad when I get a new idea in my head, but this time I reined myself in and ordered  a small amount (50 yards) of 4mm cotton cord to experiment with (from this etsy shop – look at all the pretty colours*). So glad I did!

I’ve never really measured how many metres of yarn I’m using for a project. I was kind of shocked how quickly I used up the cord!

Folks, this is 50 yards of cord, crocheted. With a teeny bit left over to make tassels.

I ordered some samples of the cheeriest looking colours.

The cord makes a good, stiff fabric but the texture would probably look better on a bigger piece.

Need to find a good way of resolving the top of the basket where the last round finishes. There’s a bit of a bump.

I will probably end up measuring all my baskets in yarn ball capacity.

This stuff does make up quickly!

I’ll be selling this in the etsy shop for less than the cost of the materials.

I started working out how much 10mm rope I’d need if I was going to make a laundry basket 50cm diameter and 1m high. As a rough calculation**, I’d need at least 200m if I was just coiling the rope to use as a core to crochet around. So, way more than that if I was actually crocheting with it. That makes that idea prohibitively expensive. But I do have some other ideas up my sleeve. Possibly literally…

*If you are after coloured cotton cord or rope, particularly on big reels, The Craft Twinery is another great source.

** Done in my head in bed at 2 o’clock in the morning. Radius of basket = 0.25m.
2 x π x r ≈ 6 x 0.25m = 1.5m circumference of basket.
If rope thickness is 10mm, need 100 coils to make a basket 1m high. 100 x 1.5m = 150m
Add on room for error, doing the bottom of the basket and maybe a lid and you’re going to need at least 200m.

I still need to work out the ratio of radius of circle to yarn used to crochet it.