One Hundred Small Apes.

This will be a somewhat brief introductory post to flat reed basket weaving, these two patterns are provided. Below are SOME websites you can buy supplies at:

Basketweaving.com

Peerlessratten.com

Thecountryseat.com

Explore these websites, as you learn basket weaving there's different materials you can learn to use and replace others and these websites will often provide the tools you will need too. You can use dyes or stain for flat reed, I have more experience with dyeing which basically involves boiling the color and then dunking the reeds in it.

Flat reed is literally that, flat reeds. Many flat reeds used are commercial but some traditional ones will be made of splints from trees such as Ash or White Oak. They are soaked in water and then shaped and woven into the craft desired.

Source

These patterns will tell you how you will need to cut your reeds. You will need a water source, preferably a tub of some kind, an awl, measuring tool, and a flat workspace.

Tips:

Do not let your flat reeds stay wet for too long! Let it dry in an open air space when you are not working on it or when it is complete, FLAT REED CAN MOLD.

If you soak flat reed for too long it can become mushy and unusable, at the very least if you soak it for extended periods be careful with how you bend it.

Flat reed tends to (not always) have a 'rough' and 'smooth' side, you want the rough side to be on the inside of your basket.

If you're a flat reed has started to split trim it as close to the split as you can as quickly as you can or it spreads.

Starting is the most difficult part and no basket will look like the end result in the beginning. Getting overwhelmed is normal, come back to it, these are not projects you do in one sitting.

In South Asia, heat weaves already claim more than 200,000 lives annually. According to a recent study, as temperature rises, the death toll might exceed 400,000 by 2045. India is at high risk. The study further reveals that over 200,000 deaths are currently attributed to severe temperatures, and this figure may nearly quadruple over the next twenty years. With deaths increasing and governments lacking strategies to protect laborers from dying, vulnerable workers across South Asia are demanding their governments provide heat wave protections.

Ashok Kumar, forty-two, a migrant worker from India’s Bihar state, has been running a barber shop on a footpath with no roof in India’s national capital, New Delhi, where temperatures exceed to 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit). With no shaded resting area, Kumar spends nine hours a day in a scorching heat to support his family. “Where shall I go? I have to feed my family. The government cannot install air conditioning at the roadside for us. We are dying under the blazing sun. We have no options. If we stop work, our families will die hungry,” Kumar told me. [...]

While knowing risk factors, many migrant laborers are unable to do much more than cover their heads with wet towels. “We saw how the laborer Paswan collapsed and died in India’s Nuh grain market. I can’t forget. I am working in the same market and at the same temperature. Covering my head with a wet towel gives relief. But no guarantee of life,” says Narayan Kumar, forty, a migrant worker. [...]