Basket Making

Last Saturday Maryanna and spent the day learning about basket making.  The two teachers had a lovely display of their handmade baskets and handwoven bags to inspire us.

We chose to start with a cattail basket since cattails are easy to find.  This project uses two different types of dried cattails, a stiffer one for the spokes and wider more flexible ones for the weavers.  We first soaked the weavers and repeatedly sprayed the entire project to keep it moist.

I wish I could say this came easy for me, but really I was struggling with the technique and worked at a pace much slower than Maryanna.  Occasionally I'd get stuck and she'd come over and help me, and she really found joy in that!

We took a walk to identify other useful plants for making baskets.  Pictured below is bittersweet.  There is a native bittersweet that is protected here in Michigan but this one is an invasive variety.  We gathered long strips of it and pulled off the leaves.  The thicker pieces would serve at the frame and the thinner strips would be used as weavers.

Here is our teacher Rowena with the beginnings of a bittersweet basket.

This book was recommended for unlimited ideas of plants that can be used.

When we returned back home the others were anxious to start one of their own so we spent the rest of the evening working on more baskets.  You can see here how we used an empty yogurt container and clothes pin to help form the shape.  Peter caught on quickly and worked totally independently. 

Here are the first two we finished.  

Maryanna is using her for little toys and I gave mine to Paul to collect his keys wallet and iphone.  I'm not sure I want to admit how long it took to make this little thing.  It had me wondering about how it is Ikea sells anything below $10.  Still I cannot deny the joy there was in making it and huge satisfaction in finishing it and seeing it used daily.  

I am enlivened by constantly trying and learning new things.  I'm am grateful to those who are just as enthusiastic about teaching them.  Here is the site to other nature classes in our area http://www.naturelearningcommunity.org/index.html