Oodles Knit Basket Tutorial | Easy & Fast Super Bulky Yarn Project for Beginners | Free Pattern

Okay, so for the oodles basket, we are going to be using Lion Brand's Wool-Ease Thick and Quick, and we'll need about 200 yards of it, so two skeins should be enough to make the basket. This is a super bulky weight yarn, so you can substitute with any other super bulky. Okay, just make sure it's not super soft because you want the basket to have Some structure, it's knit, so it's not going to be as structured as, say, a crochet basket, but we're going to do our best. This is an 80% acrylic, 20% wool. It is machine washable and dryable, so that way you can wash your basket if it gets a little dusty. So that yarn, I will link to some other suggestions on my website where the pattern is. Okay with the yarn you're going to need size 8 5 millimeter knitting needles. These are a 24 inch circular. These are interchangeable but you can use fixed of course. These are very cool. These are from Knitter's Pride and these are called the Cubic Symphony Rows and if you can see if you can You can tell they are square shaped. Super duper interesting and I got a whole set of these and I reviewed them on my channel so I'll link to that if you're interested in. square needles but that's what I'm going to use for this project. The only other thing is a yarn needle and a stitch marker so let's go and get everything ready. Go to the website to grab the pattern and we'll get started. Okay to work the basket we're going to start with our cast on. So we're actually working the basket from the top down. I think this is the only basket pattern that I have where I work it from the top down. Usually I make a base and then work up. So this one's a little bit different. In case you're wondering why I have such small needles, the ball band actually calls for a 9mm needle, but I want our stitches small and tight to give the basket as much structure as it can get being a knit basket. So because of that, I chose 5mm. It makes the stitches nice and tight and it's still easy to work into so we're going to cast on 100 stitches so quite a few give yourself a little room my tip i have a little video on this but put your finger right between your two stitches as you're making it and then go on to your next one and leave that kind of space between and that'll give you enough space to work into your stitches Once you start your basket, it won't make it super tight up at the top. So keep going with 100 cast-ons and we'll come back and then we will join it and put a stitch marker in there so we can start making the basket. Okay, I have my 100 stitches and now we're going to join in the rounds. So your stitches are probably going to be twisted all around on your needles. An easy way that I like to... get them all lined up so that i don't have twisted stitches let me move my stitch marker out of the way as i lay it down and then i point all of the stitches in the same direction so i kind of work my way around and adjust them all to make sure that i don't have any twisted stitches because that will not work out well for your basket and once i know They are all laying in the right direction. Even if they start to twist again, I know that I have put them in the right direction so that when I get to this end, they are facing the right way. Then I know I'm ready to join. So even though it looks a little wackadoodle, they are all going the right way so I can join. So now I am ready to go. So I'm going to flip this over so I So I can start joining. I'm going to put my Stitch marker on and then we'll begin round one. So round one is going to be a very simple repeat of knit one, purl one. So the way that I keep my Join tight or close together is I bring the stitch all the way over to where this stitch is before I slide it off. So if you're making it and you've got like a ton of room like this and you're sliding it off, you're gonna have a big gap. So bring it all the way next to where your round on the other needles is or the end of your other needles and then slip that off and then And then you'll have a nice tight joint. Then we're going to purl one. and then knit one and you'll see the stitches try to keep them tight don't you know they'll they'll still be easy to work into because it's super bulky yarn but try to keep them as tight as possible because that'll give you the best structure for that basket so i'm keeping everything very tensioned as i go did i just do a purl yes so continue that around And then we will come back and do round two. Okay, here I am at the last two stitches. So one more knit and one purl. Don't lose your loop here. Okay, so I still, you can see like I have kind of a gap here, but it's going to close up as I start working the next round, but what I want to do one more time is just make sure that I am all facing the same way before I totally join this, because sometimes it does get a little looped around as you're working, so you just want to do one more double check so they're all facing the same way. And then we're going to begin round two. So round two is going to be a repeat of round one, where we're doing the knit one, purl one again. This basket is made out of moss stitch. And if you know what moss stitch is, it's two rows of the same and then two rows offset. So it's two rows of knit one, purl one, and then two rows of purl one, knit one. So on this Second row, you'll hear sometimes they'll say knit the knits and purl the purls, so if you're used to reading your stitches, that will be easy for you. If you are not used to reading your stitches, I have tutorials on that if you want to get better at it, because that will help you to see what stitch you're on. So in the meantime, you can go check that out if you need it. Otherwise, keep on going around with your knit one, purl ones, and then we'll just talk about rows three and four and start those up a little bit and then get going really on this basket. Okay, here is the end of round two, and we just have one knit and one purl left. So now we're going to begin the moss stitch and you can see my gap is closed and as I keep working it's going to close even more. It's magic. But with the moss stitch the next thing that you would see is purl the knits and knit the purls is what they say. But basically what that means is we had two knits from the round below. We're going to purl into that knit. But you can just think of it as a purl one, knit one, all the way around. So we have purls below with those bumps, we knit into that one. So instead of knit one, purl one, we are purling one, knitting one. But being able to read your stitches will help you if you put your work down, so be sure to check out that video if you're not super comfortable on how to do that. But we'll continue this around. We're going to do Two rounds of this pattern of purl one, knit one, or knitting the purls and purling the knits, and then we just repeat these four rows so we'll go around we'll finish the the fourth row see round so you can see how that moss stitch looks and then we'll just talk about what we're going to do from there so go do rounds three and four with a purl one knit one and then we'll come back and talk about how long you're going to do that for until we start closing the bottom All right, here I am at the end of round four. So we'll take a look at the moss stitch. I'm going to do one stitch of the next round so I can slip my marker. So you'll see it gives you kind of a cross hatch pattern. So we're going to keep repeating these four rounds. Until the basket measures about 8 1⁄2 inches. Now, because this yarn only has 106 yards and we're using 200 yards, you want to stick close to gauge or you might need an extra ball if you're making your stitches slightly bigger. But this is very customizable of course. You don't have to go eight and a half inches. You can go eight inches if you think you're about to run out of yarn and do the basket a little bit shorter. You can make a shallow basket out of this, whatever size you want. It's a nice wide basket to fit lots of things. So once you get to your desired length, We'll come back, I'll do the full length, we'll come back and we'll do the decreasing for the bottom of the basket together. So continue, so for rounds 5 and 6, you'll be doing knit 1, purl 1. So, we're going to go against what the last two stitches were, or the last two rounds, and then for rounds seven and eight, you'll do purl one, knit one. So it's just two rounds of the same stitch, and then you switch to two rounds of the next stitch. Nice and simple, keep going around, and we'll come back and close the basket. Okay here I am at the end of my round. I have worked eight and a half inches of the basket and now I am ready for the base of the basket where I will be decreasing to close it up. So what I'm going to do is this is going to be one of my five stitch markers I'm going to be using so I'm just going to slide to make that you know the beginning of my round. I picked four other stitch markers that are contrasting so that I don't lose what my beginning round stitch marker is, so that's a quick tip. Don't use all the same stitch markers because then you might have to, you might forget where you're at and you have to go back and try to count and figure out how many stitches and all that good stuff. Just use four different stitch markers from whatever your round stitch marker is. is you know your round marking stitch marker you know what i mean so anyways we're gonna start with round one of the base so to begin we're gonna knit 18 and then we're gonna knit two together so we're gonna knit 18 stitches okay here's number 18 and then we're going to knit two together And after that, we're going to place a stitch marker. So knitting two together, we're going to go to the second stitch on the left needle and go left to right, get through both of those stitches and just knit it off like normal, but taking two off at the same time. Then we're going to place a stitch marker and we're going to do that five times. So we're So we're gonna knit 18 stitches. do a knit two together and place a stitch marker and obviously the very last one is our round marker so that one will already be there but this will make us decrease by a total of five 5 stitches for this round, so continue with 18 stitches. One, knit two together, place your marker, and we'll come back at the end of this and I'll explain how we're going to do the rest of these decreases. Okay, here I am right at the end of my round one of the base. I have two stitches left, and here is my round marker, and we are going to knit these two together. Slip that. Now, what we're going to do is pretty much the same thing over and over again. We're going to keep reducing by five stitches every single round. And how we're going to do that is we're going to knit until we get to two stitches before each stitch marker. So technically this is 17 stitches and the next round will be 16 and 15 and 14. It'll just decrease by one every single time. But we're going to knit to two stitches before each stitch marker and then we are going to do a knit two together and slip that stitch marker and then continue on doing the same thing all the way around. So I'm gonna get here eventually. So that makes it a little easier instead of writing out, you know, 17 stitches, 16 stitches, 15. This allows you to be able to go and watch TV or do whatever while you're decreasing. This is just a handy little trick if you are working on decreasing projects. You can throw in those stitch markers instead of having to count and that'll keep track for you. So, I am going to go through, and I'm going to not switch, because you'll see that I say you can switch to DPNs if you like on decreasing. I am super lazy. I don't like to go look for DPNs when I'm in the middle of a project, so I do a very lazy. way of decreasing while still using my circulars. So as I get because, you know, I'll be able to use these for quite a bit before it starts kind of becoming a problem. If you've worked in decreasing, you kind of know what I'm already talking about. But I'm going to show you the way that I continue working with the circulars instead of having to switch to DPNs because I really am that lazy that I don't want to go find my stack of DPNs and find the one I need. Plus, I just don't really like working with DPNs. It's so much easier with the circulars. It takes a little bit, probably a little extra time maybe. I don't know. I don't, maybe it doesn't. It's that time spent wasting looking for the DPNs. So I'll show you what I do. I'm going to get... A few more rounds in or a lot of rounds in to where I am having an issue using my circulars and then you'll see what I mean and how I still work with them. So continue working. All of your stitches up to the last two of each stitch marker, knit two or knit those two together and keep going. So every round you're going to decrease by five stitches. So I'll come back before we get all the way to round 20, really round 19, and show you how to work with those. Circulars, but uh keep on going. I'll meet you back in a bit. Okay. I've gotten to the point where I am now I should switch to double pointed needles, but I'm not Because I'm lazy So you'll see like it. It's just it's there's not enough stitches to fill up the entire cord So I'm gonna show you my lazy way of working with the circulars so that you don't have to switch. So basically I grab my cord and i pull it out kind of in a certain area wherever and i slide my stitches down to my left needle so just a certain amount that i can work with easily and then i keep on going with my stitches i keep doing whatever my pattern is and i just keep pushing those down with the cord sticking out the end this is probably not new to many people Probably is one of those things you just figure out on your own when you don't want to get up, but just in case you have not worked with circulars before, you can keep on going without having to switch to double pointed needles. So as I get to the area where the cord is pulled out, which I'm almost there, I will just move it further down and pull out the cord again. So you just have to kind of work it around where the join is and get the stitches on the needle, but you can literally just keep doing that over and over again until you get towards the end. But that is your quick little tutorial on how to work with the circulars without having to switch to DPNs. Okay, here I am on round 20, the very last round, and I am doing my last couple knit two togethers and just showing you kind of how i still work without the dpns i kind of pull out my cord and then almost like i just have two knitting needles do my stitches so i'm doing One thing, like as you, um just two more i think as these get tighter with these knit two togethers as you're working down, it can get a little difficult, you know, that i'm done to get through, so have patience, pull on your string or your yarn, whatever you have, but these last couple are really giving me some trouble. I'm, I have a new, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you what I think about these needles after After I'm done, they are... Um, I've changed my view on them since the beginning of the project, so I'll explain that in just a second, but let me finish off this last stitch, and then we'll close off the hole. Okay, I'm down to my last five stitches, so I'm ready to bind off, or just close the hole, so I have finished my stitches, I pulled out the stitch markers as I did that last round, And now I'm just going to cut a tail long enough to weave in. And put that on a yarn needle. Love these nice big metal ones, especially with the curved tip when I'm doing like this kind of thing. Guide it around the circle a little better. Okay, so to close this off so that I don't lose my stitches, I'm going to keep going in a circle. So I'm going to bring my needle out this way. So I'm just going to slide it from the needle to my other needle, my yarn needle. Pull that through just so I don't lose it. Then we have two more. Now I can pull that nice and tight and close off that hole and then I'm going to weave in and The bottom is all done, and we're ready to start stuffing this basket with stuff. So I'm going to go close this and weave in my ends, and then we'll look at the finished product, and I'll tell you about those needles. And that wraps up the oodles basket. As promised, I wanted to share my thoughts on the needles I used for this project. I worked with the Knitter's Pride Cubics, which I normally love for a lot of my knitting. But, for this project, they were definitely not the right choice. The tight stitches in this pattern made the square edges uncomfortable and even a bit painful to work with. If you're planning to make your own basket, I highly recommend switching to something smoother and easier on the hands, like the Addi Turbo Needles, I've linked those below. And don't forget to tag me when you finish your basket, I absolutely love seeing all your finished projects. But I am Deja with Knit and Crochet Ever After and thank you for watching.