Destroying the Basket

   The year before last I was working on a Personal Progress program through the church. Some of you may remember what I wrote about it. Part of the program was to complete a number of projects. One of the projects was to create something for use in the home. I decided I was going to make a basket out of  T-shirt yarn. The yarn would be made from worn out and unneeded shirts.
   I spent months and months collecting shirts cutting them carefully into strips and winding the strips into balls. When I had enough balls I started knitting the yarn into thick i-cords. the cords would be coiled and used to make the basket.
   After many months I had enough cords. I bought some heavy duty thread and sewing needles. I began to fashion my basket. I sewed the bottom and then this sides coiling the cords as I sewed. In order to make the basket sides stand up I used two rows of cords. After several weeks of worth, I was finished it.
   It was a mess. The sides did not stand up straight and somehow opening of the basket was much narrower than the bottom. It was ugly and unusable. I was hurt. I had spent so long working on it and it didn't turn out at all. I figured I could somehow make it useful for something and put it in a corner with my craft things. I had some leftover cords that I used to make a small rug. It turned out just fine.
   Since then I had kept the basket hidden in the corner, not wanting to deal with it. I had to do something with it. I don't like unusable things in the house. I thought perhaps Scamp or Colby might want to use it for a bed. Even they didn't like it.
  I decided I was going to make it into a rug. First though,I needed to finish the knitting projects I had committed to. I had a couple blankets and other things to knit. Once I had finished the final knitting project, it was time. One night, while watching Start Trek- The Next Generation, I gleefully ripped the basket apart. I pulled out the threads that held the coils together. Most of the thread came out in one piece. I was able to salvage it. That made me happy. I could reuse it. I was amazed at how easily and quickly it came apart. The project that had taken me several weeks to put together was destroyed in two hours.
  I had a pile of cords waiting in expectation. I decided to keep the bottom of the basket intact. I liked how it looked. All I needed to do was continue sewing the cords.
  A challenge soon arose. All the cords were of different colours. Not all the colours would look good together. That was easy to remedy. I would simply make two rugs. One rug would be the darker coloured cords. The other rugs would be made of the lighter coloured cords. Problem solved.
  As I was sewing the rug one night, Colby came and sat on the rug which was laying on my lap. He purred softly, clearly he liked my work. He decided to claim the rug. That was fine with me.  The only problem was that I could not continue to sew with him on my lap.
  I'm glad he likes it because it is kind of ugly. I didn't want to buy black thread so I am using the cream coloured thread that I salvaged. It's a bit messy, but I don't care. At least it will be something usable.
  Actually, looking at it from my chair, it doesn't look too bad after all......