Recycled Crochet Basket

Every crafty person runs out of room to put their hoard of materials.  And every crafty person will automatically think 'What can I make to hold all of my making things?' and my answer to this was to crochet a basket for my wool.
I already had a case full of wool but obviously that got full up pretty quickly.  I was scrolling through Pinterest when I saw the idea of using plastic bags to crochet a mat.  I love the recycling idea and my boyfriend and I are self confessed plastic bag hoarders (they're 5p, I'm not dumping a bag that I payed for) so I thought this is brill, cut down the amount of plastic bags under our kitchen sink AND solve my no room for wool crisis.  I decided to create a plastic basket and this is the end result! I could have made it bigger but this took long enough and if it was any bigger I have a feeling the basket would lose it's shape.
In super simple, straight to the point terms: here is how I made my crocheted plastic basket.

 Firstly, I needed quite a few plastic bags.  I used ones that were all of the same colour (there are other supermarkets out there, just saying) but I suppose you could use a range of colours and create a stripey one.  Whatever you want to do.

 I flattened out one plastic bag at a time and cut off the handles and the bottom join with a straight line.  With the 'tube' of plastic left from the centre I then cut that into strips.  Only cut up to about an inch from the top where one fold is and make each strip just under an inch each.  Each strip should be two layers and these layers should still be joined at the top and bottom where the folds are.
So you now have strips of plastic that look like it's been fringed basically.

 Open up the plastic at the fold that joins all the strips.  It should be symmetrical along the fold.

 This bit can be tricky as it's easy to cut something you're not supposed to.  To make the continuous strip of plastic in order for you to crochet with, a cut needs to be made diagonally from the edge of one strip to another.  Don't cut straight across or you will be left with lots of short strips of plastic.  Cut diagonally to ensure it all continues onto one another.  Do this all the way down the area where the fold is and you should be left with a long enough strip to wrap into a ball.  I needed roughly 10 of these.

To start crocheting the actual basket you'll need to know how to start either a magic ring or just create a circle with chains, it's up to you.  Start to single crochet around, adding extra single crochets where you feel it getting tight and whenever it starts to curl up.  You want to make this circle completely flat.  You should be adding less and less extra crochets as you go along.  I used a 10mm hook so yes you need a really fat hook.

This circle is the bottom of the basket so keep going, joining the next ball of plastic whenever needed, until you get the width of the basket you want.  Mine is just over a foot wide.
You'll then need to start just doing single crochets without the extra ones.  This will start to create the sides of the basket.  It may take a few rounds to start to see it curve up.  Keep going around until you get the desired height of your basket.

Handles are optional but they're cute.  I created about 10 chains where I wanted my handle to be, joined it after about 8 stitches to create the loop of the handle and then single crocheted back over the chains to make the handle stronger.  Do this on both sides, equal distances from each other.


And that's all! Easy peasy! Just takes a while and the plastic can be tough to crochet with.  Just keep it nice and loose and you should have no problems.  Hope this has inspired you to make room for more wool cause you can never have too much ;)