Designer Spotlight: Evergreen Basket by Darla Fanton

After nearly half a century knitting and crocheting, it’s fair to say Darla Fanton is something of an expert. She has produced more than 100 designs over the years and is known for reintroducing and popularizing old techniques.

Darla’s Evergreen Basket is featured in the new special issue of Interweave Crochet Home. The cute container has colorwork tree designs worked in tapestry crochet – where you make a single crochet over the yarn color not in use – with our Vintage yarn. It finishes at approximately four inches tall and six inches across the top, making it a perfect size to hold fruit, potpourri or holiday treats.

How did you come up with this design?

For this project I wanted to design a sturdy, but soft basket. In order to make the tree stand straight, I used split single crochet instead of the traditional single crochet stitch. In split single crochet you work in the center of the stitch, between the legs of the stitch, rather than in the top of the stitch. This method allows the stitches to stack directly above one another instead of slightly offset as happens when working in the top of the stitch. It can be a bit more difficult to insert the hook in the center of the stitch. Practice and using a crochet hook with a sharp tip will ease the way.

What made you choose this yarn?

I enjoy working with Berroco Vintage and often recommend it to my beginning crochet students at the Knitting Bee in Portland, Oregon. It comes in so many beautiful colors and the fact that it is machine washable makes it perfect for the home decor items and accessories that I love to design.

What’s your favorite thing about knitting/crochet?

To me nothing says “love” like being wrapped in a scarf, shawl or throw that was handknit or crocheted by somebody who cares.

Do you have a cool design you want to share? Or did you recently finish a project with Berroco yarn? You can email Ashley: apalumbo@berroco.com or post it to the Berroco Lovers forum in Ravelry.