Knitted hanging basket... ...

This is kind of a follow up post to the one I wrote about my recent adventures in knitting, which I quit enjoyed.

As the title suggests this post is about a knitted hanging basket, not as original as you might think, it turns out I'm not the only one to try this, people have been knitting pot hangers and such like for years.

We are trying to be more self sufficient (you may be wondering what that's got to do with knitting) and as part of that we have started to make our own equipment as well (I recently turned an old fence post into a plant pot making tool ---> plant pot maker (opens in new window) it's not just wooden tools, we grow our own veg and space is a problem to be solved, we are lucky in that our garden is quite large, but most of it is for the kids to play in, they wouldn't be happy if I turned the whole lot into a veggy patch (I've considered it on occasion) but even with the space we have we don't always have room for lots of large plants so hanging baskets is a good answer, and they don't often get walked through by the kids.

In post I wrote about knitting I mentioned experimenting with different materials, one of those was string, which as it turned out wasn't easy to knit with using small needles, so I made some large ones (and guess what ? I wrote a post about them ---> chunky knitting needle post (opens in new window) the large needles where great for the string I intended to use, they did take a little getting used to being the best part of 3 feet long, but once I figured out a good way to hold them I was off.

And this is what I ended up with -

On reflection a square would have been better.

As you can see I haven't counted my stitches very well as I ended up with a rectangle, a square would be neater for the purpose I made it for, but it does work, and it's quite large so will hold a good few plants, in this case tomatoes, least that's what I want to put in it, what actually goes in it may be something entirely different.

The stitches are quite big so obviously it will need some kind of lining, I figured general hanging basket liners would do, or as my wife (link opens in new window) pointed out we could make paper ones, using a bowl as a mould, we've done this before when the kids have done craft type things, even better as we often have newspapers spare.

I also had to figure out a good way to hang the things, I decided a chain was best, so I used a basic crochet chain stitch to make.... well chains out of string.

Crochet string chains -

They are very strong and will work well.

My crochet isn't the best (some of the stitches baffle me) but a simple chain stitch is easy to do (I won't post a link about the chunky crochet hook I made, it's on here somewhere ;-)) attaching the chains was easy enough, I basically tied them to each corner of the basket using a couple of tight knots, they seem secure, although I did test it to see if it would work and hold a little weight.

The finished article - 

Not the best picture, but you can see the idea.

Like I said it works and will hold weight (to test it I filled a mixing bowl with stuff) it will be quite large when full of compost and plants, the next ones I make will be smaller and squarer ;-) I think they look quite good, and more attractive than the metal ones, this one isn't as tidy as it could be, but I'm happy enough with it, and it will also break down eventually, at which point it can be composted as it's made from natural string, you can't do that with the metal ones, hopefully I'll get a few years out of it before that happens, why not have a go yourself ? I found it quite enjoyable.

Thanks for reading.