#weaving baskets

This is what I got!

I immediately tried them on some grass and they struggled to cut it. But this was according to the plan - I would restore them next.

Most rust-ridden tools are restored by getting submerged in vinegar, but I didn't wanna waste half a bottle of vinegar, so. I used a little trick where I wet some toilet paper in vinegar, wrapped it around the shears and left them in a plastic container for 24hrs, slightly dipped in vinegar so they can't dry out.

It worked! I scrubbed it with some wire for all rust to drop off, and coated them in oil to make them click easier. I also realized they have a slight defect - one of the handles pushed out through the plastic. I don't think it matters, I'm overjoyed that the entire handle is metal so even if the plastic breaks, shears will still work.

Now to test it out! I'm off to the forest to gather some basketry materials.

I don't know what kind of plant this is, but it has a great basketry vibe so I gathered a bunch! The fiber feels so strong. Shears had zero problems snapping these off. But now for the ultimate test, can I snap this off?

So, my dandelion stems have all dried up, and I've been excited to try a dandelion basket. I again, wasn't in the mood to actually follow instructions, it was more of a 'mess around and find out' scenario. So I took the instructions from the Foraged Fibres website (this website is invaluable for basketry I love it so much), and I noticed she had some of the wider stems for the spokes. I didn't have any stems that were wide, so, I improvised, and tore off some corn husks. I put them underwater, together with dandelion stems, and only then my brain registered possibly reading 'don't submerge dandelion stems, just spray them with water'. Oops.

It turned out, dandelion stems, when submerged in water, get very slimy and flimsy, and run the risk of breaking if you put a lot of tension on them. Well who would have known. Weaving them around the corn husks, made me feel like they were going to break, so I didn't put a lot of tension in this basket; I couldn't tighten the husk base. Still, I persevered, and I ended up with this very wonky, whimsy and interesting basket:

I absolutely loved it, but later when it dried, I realized it was quite flimsy and unstable, it could be crushed with very little pressure. But, I was hooked. The next day, I grabbed every dandelion stem I could find around the place, I was now wiser and more experienced, and my next basket would be so much better.

They were taking a long time to dry, and I was offended. So, while waiting, I decided to give it another go just using the corn husks; they did seem like an equally bendy and possibly stronger material. I started making a very tiny basket, but again ran into a problem; I didn't know how to correctly add a new piece of material in. In the first basket, I would just tie the two dandelion stems together, and it was a tiny knot, and it wasn't very visible in the final product. With the corn husks, it was very visible. I pretended this wasn't an issue and finished this tiny adorable basket, with the absolutely perfect rim, and many visible knots on the outside. I still think it's cute!

I looked into how to properly add the material, and figured it out by simply reading the instructions properly (which were, bend the new pieces behind the basket as you weave them in). And then I thought, okay, now I know everything. The next basket will be perfect.

My dandelions were again, ready, but before I started, I wanted to try making cordage for the first time. There were some corn husks leftover from the last basket, and I was eager to try and make a little string out of them. It was extremely educational to do so!

I would have never imagined how strong you can make a cord by just using the power of tension and coiling natural fibres over and over around each other, I was surprised by how tough it was, and just as I was bragging to my roommate about making a rope out of corn husk, I tried its strength and broke it. Which made us both laugh, and made me learn another lesson – they're not that strong unless you're coiling several of them together.

I started another dandelion basket, again using the corn husks as the base, because I couldn't find any wider dandelion stems. Here's my first tiny bit of cordage, and my start of the third basket:

This time, I remembered to just spray my dandelion stems, so they were tough enough for me to introduce proper tension while weaving, and produced actually tight-woven basket! This third one was a great learning experience in adding and removing tension and controlling how a basket will curve or open up. I mean by this, that I realized I don't know how to do any of that and I'm just introducing way too much tension all the time and everything turns out curving the wrong way at all times. I guess that knowledge can only come from more experience.

It turned out the husks were not long enough to make a proper pretty rim, so I settled for a weak version, and to be honest I didn't even execute it correctly, but I was tired, it took me a lot of hours to make this basket.

I have to admit that the level of enjoyment was only increasing from basket to basket; the first one was extremely hard to make, the second one was a short and pleasurable experience, the third one was pure joy (until I realized the rim wasn't gonna be perfect and I couldn't control the curving, then I was like, meh ok).

I also realized I'm very arrogant while learning; I constantly ignore instructions and assume, that despite all of the experience and knowledge people put in writing those instructions, I surely am going to figure it out by myself, or even figure out a better version of it, which is when I usually mess up badly, and laugh at myself. But that's the only way of learning I can stand; I don't trust that the instructions are correct until I've tried things my way first. Then, and only then, I might consider that the instructions are onto something. I'm very distrustful! But also, in some cases, I do end up figuring out an easier way to do things, and by easier I mean, the way I thought of, which gives me special satisfaction so thats easier for me (feeds my ego).

I might indulge and make another miniature basket, they're very adorable and nice to look at, but I hope to use all that blackberry bramble I gathered, and make a foraging basket next. And for these three, I had to find them some purpose, so the corn husk one got to hold little dried flowers, the whimsy one was fitting to hold a little houseleek plant that was already in a container, and the last one is now holding marbles! So they've been elevated to the function of little trinkets, that people can look at your house and be like 'whats this thing' at which point you're free to make up any weird story about its history.

So if you remember, a few days ago I attempted to make a basket out of unprocessed, unknown type of bush/tree, and it was fun! It didn’t produce a basket, but I got some practical knowledge.

Since then, I’ve started following a lot of basketry groups and blogs, and the things I’ve learned have made me impressed and intrigued. Firstly, these people have no limits in what they’ll make a basket of; trees, grasses, dry stems of plants, houseplants, dry corn leaves, wild brambles, tree bark, vines, you name it; they’ve made a basket out of it. Secondly, they’re not just making natural baskets, but cordage, out of almost every natural material! They know how to process stems of cattails and all kinds of plants in order to get the fibers and make them into little cords, and then they can even use those cords for making baskets! And the cords can be used for anything you would need a piece of string, like macrame, crafts, tying up plants, it’s incredible!

So now I’m determined to get more of this knowledge, it seems almost godly to be able to go out in the wild and then create practical items out of every piece of grass, stem and tree.

One vital piece of information I’ve gathered, is that you can harvest blackberry bramble using thick gloves and shears, and then you run it thru a piece of old denim in order to scrub all of the thorns from it, and it’s usable for basketry. This information feels golden, because not only is blackberry is perfectly pliable and easy to manipulate in basketry, but it’s invasive and overgrowing the entire field I work on, so making it usable for practical purposes is a dream come true. I will be testing this out today!

So I’m at it again; I’m out and first thing I want to do is collect that same non-identified tree/bush branches in order to try and complete my failed basket. I’m smarter this time, so I’ll be collecting only the thinnest and most pliable branches!

This is how that bush thing looks like, it even has some black berries, which makes me believe it’s a rhamnus (Buckthorn). Anyway, I got a bunch of it, and then went to look for the blackberry brambles.

I found this grass situation on the way, and figured that if everything else fails, I can always try to make some grass stuff? Grass has to be easy to weave with, it’s extremely pliant. The only thing is, this grass’ edge is very sharp. It gave me a papercut almost immediately. Still, I got a bunch. Maybe it won’t matter that it’s sharp.

Okay, so I arrived at the blackberry place, and I have my very thick gloves on, and I’ll try running the vines thru a piece of old denim, to see if it really removes all those thorns:

Not only it worked, it worked immediately and perfectly! I was careful to run it in both directions, but even after running it once, the brambles have been smooth and safe to handle! I was able to hold it in my hand! I’m extremely pleased, and I spent next 15 minutes pulling out the invasive blackberries, and making good material out of them:

My piece of denim is a bit filthy, but it isn’t badly damaged! It will be good for more times.

So, I got home, put all that stuff on the floor, and figured I should go see if I can re-do my last basket. It’s been on my balcony ever since, drawing the attention and sympathy of the onlookers. Here’s what I got:

Since the spines of the last basket were essentially fine, I tore off all of the branches I attempted to weave with the last time, and decided to start again, this time with a bit thinner ones!

And it started off great! Mind you, I was still using a LOT of brute force here, these branches did not want to bend the way I wanted them to, I was being pretty aggressive to make it look like this. The start looks awesome, and then I realized that bending the basket to go up, is not as easy as it was with newspapers, and I struggled a bit to make the bend and to continue weaving upwards.

And here’s a basket! As you can see, I didn’t end it very professionally, I just cut off the ribs and pushed in the handle (it’s not safely inside, it could detach with weight), but this, this is definitely a basket-shaped item! Compared to the last thing I did, this is a good learning curve in the working.

Now, sadly, this basket is barely usable, or more specifically, it’s usable only for the stuff that doesn’t mind being stabbed. Since the material was so hard to bend, when I wanted to put in a new branch, I had to stab it into the basket, and force it into any opening available; I couldn’t tuck it down nicely as you’re supposed to. So at the end, I had to cut a whole lot of branch endings, and the sharp edges have remained everywhere; you can get stabbed just by holding this thing.

Not to despair, this is a learning basket, and now I know there’s a problem like that, I can work on it! I filled that basket with walnuts and pinecones and I’m perfectly happy with how it looks right now.

This basket will also show me how this material stands the test of time; when raw materials like this dry, they usually shrink up, so the basket might lose a bit of it’s shape, and I will see in few months what it looks like.

So, you remember me dragging home all that blackberry vine, and figuring out how I could get rid of all the thorns just by running it thru a piece of old denim? They're now ready to be weaved!

After experimenting with raw materials, it turned out, it's worth waiting for the materials to dry, and then soak them, and only then weave. Baskets from raw materials dry very poorly, and become flimsy and weak. So, these have been drying for a few weeks, and I left them in a bucket of water overnight, and now they're nice and pliable.

I'm very nervous about this basket, because it's the kind I've never done before and it looks so cool to me! It's weaved with ivy originally, but I decided blackberry bramble would be okay too. It also takes 2 pre-made hoops, which I made out of young peach wood, that I was pruning recently and realized it would be a good basket material. Here are my hoops, and this is what you do with them:

They're going to be the frame of the basket! I fastened these with a thin piece of blackberry vine, and the next step is to make a specific type of weave to keep them together, called 'God's Eye', which I find very cool. Here's how it looks!

I was intimidated by this until I tried it, and then it turned out to be the simplest, most instinctive thing ever. Next step is to put ribs in the basket! These are also young peach branches. I was worried how they're going to stay still in there, and then it turned out, god's eye is perfect for holding ribs, I did not have any trouble at all keeping them tight in there.

And the last step, you can already see started in the picture, is to weave the vine around the god's eye, and then from one side of the basket to another, all the way until you're finished. It's a bit finnicky because you have to pull the entire vine thru the ribs, every time, but once you get a hang of it, it's fun to do it!

I had trouble because as I came close to the middle of it, I realized I wouldn't have enough blackberry bramble to finish it up! I felt as if I gathered soo many, but in the end, it was barely enough to scrap one basket together.

The first picture is when I started panicking for real, and the second shows just how close I was to finishing it. It's not super noticeable that there's some bramble missing, so I just decided to go ahead and call it finished. Here it is!

There's a lot of room for improvement here, but it's absolutely the best basket I've made out of wild materials so far, and I'm so happy about it! I might do a few more, but, this time, I'll make sure to gather enough bramble.

So I wanted this skill since I was a kid, because I saw my parents doing it, and they wouldn't teach me. So naturally, as an adult with entire internet at my disposal, I decided to rebel and get the knowledge anyway. And while I was looking into that, I realized people have started a new trend from making baskets out of old newspaper, and I had.. a lot of newspaper.

There's a process of growing, wetting, drying, and peeling the wood for the wooden baskets, and I realized it would be hard to do it in an apartment, but newspapers were a good starting point to learn how to actually weave the material and put the baskets together.

So these are first things I was making, a fruit bowl, a decorative basket, and a big one that I'm using as a laundry basket. They're all useful and decorative at once, and I got acrylic paint on them, so they wouldn't leak any color and stay firm once they're done. Baskets from newspapers are incredibly firm! People are surprised when they touch them just how stable they are. That's because you roll an entire page of newspaper in one long stick, and then weave the stick together. It's firm.

I later made an angular one specifically to hold the newspaper hanging off of the radiator pipe, so they wouldn't have to lie around, and a treasure chest, because at that point, why not? It's filled with holiday decorations I keep safe in there.

I also build a few for foraging purposes, for balcony, for keeping plastic bags in, and so on. Making them out of wood would be a bit harder but similar, because weaving is done on the same principle.