Earth Knack: Stone Age Skills for the 21st Century by Bart Blankenship;Robin Blankenship

Author:Bart Blankenship;Robin Blankenship [Blankenship, Bart Blankenship;Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-04-05T22:07:21+00:00

WILLOW TWINE BASKET

Making whole-shoot willow twine baskets is fun. There are several different ways to start the weaving.

To make a fish trap, tying the willow ends together in a bundle is a quick-and-easy start that lends to the design of a fish trap.

Another quick-and-easy start is tying a cross of willows together with cord. This also works well if you use cord for the basket instead of willows.

A locked-in cross start, shown to us by Peg Mathewson, is great for making pack baskets, wool-washing baskets, trash cans, laundry hampers, egg-collecting baskets, or any other basket shape or use you want.

You will need lots of straight and flexible willow shoots. (Any other flexible material could he used instead, i.e., weeping willow branches, cloth, yarn, or roots.) The longer they are, the less splicing you have to do. A sharp cutting edge helps so you can sharpen the shoots when you add them as spokes, and a sturdy wooden awl is handy for prying into tightly twined openings when you want to finish the top of the basket or shove in a stubborn spoke shoot.

If you have chosen either of the tied-together basket starts, you can begin twining right away. The two shoots that you start with are called weavers, and you will twine them around and around, splicing as they get short. Pick any two shoots next to each other. The other shoots coming out of the start are called spokes. Twine the weavers around these. Go right to step 11 and begin twining your weavers.

To begin the locked-cross start, lay 8 willow shoots together in a cross formation with 4 shoots below, the ends pointing east and west, and 4 shoots above, the ends pointing north and south. (We're using these directional words for clarity, so put away your compass!) Since the 8 shoots come together in the middle, they now each have two sets of ends sticking out from that middle. This gives you 16 ends sticking out from the center, 4 in each direction. This looks like the New Mexico sun symbol. (We were theorizing the other day that possibly this sun symbol was originally a basket weaver's petroglyph. You know, one of those old rock signs that meant, "Hey, everybody! Basket Weavers Guild meets next Thursday night. Be there!")

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