r/BasketWeaving

my second basket!

Like most people in my hometown long ago, my grandpa used to make a lot of baskets. He crafted the basket on the first picture in front of me when I was 10 yo (I'm 30 now). The other baskets were made before I was born, and even though they are in bad conditions, we are still using them on a regular basis for garden work. These things are incredibly solid.

The trees he was pruning are now either dead or fully grown and home to the chiffchaff. So I spent a lot of time collecting cuttings here and there this winter to plant them on a piece of wet land that my grandma owns. I plan on planting about 30 trees, which will allow me to grow massive amounts of rods for me and others who don't have the chance of inheriting a piece of wet land to grow their own willows. See you back in two years!

Up to this point I have been weaving without using a mould for shape, free hand if one can call it that. I'd seen artists use many different household items as moulds especially for softer materials whereas weaving with willow doesn't seem to need them. I used a small glass bowl as the mould for this piece. I found it quite challenging because the smoothness of the glass made for an unstable piece as I was weaving. Still I persisted.

I had been finding that with free hand I was having troubles getting a tight and even weave when the spokes of cattail are relatively soft. This is probably a skill issue and it may get better as I learn more and get more practice. However, using a mould made it much, much easier to do. I was able to hold the spokes against the mould so that I could pull the weavers tight without deforming the spokes or inadvertently pulling the spokes inwards or outwards. Everything turned out much more even and regular.

I'm very happy with this cute little basket. She feels a bit more elegant and refined than the more raw and organic feel of the previous baskets.

PS. It also made a great cat crown before trimming 💕

I’m new to baskets and starting out with rattan, following purchased instructions, like this one here. I’m working on branching out to designing my own but am wondering about the relationship between basket size and reed size, for structural stability. Obviously the bigger the basket, the wider the stakes need to be if you don’t want it to flop around, right? But are there rules of thumb for when to bump up a size? Are there sizes or proportions that just aren’t feasible? I’d like to make a couple that are 12” by 27” and 12” tall. Will it work? Do I need 1” stakes or could I get away with 3/4”? Are there design elements that influence it? Thanks for any insight! I’ve read a number of books but none got into this

Someone suggested that I share this journey with fellow Redditors. I hope this is the right place for it.

I got obsessed with grass plaiting over the winter. I wanted to make a hat for one of the cats that I live with but quickly found out that pasture grasses are far from ideal for baskets and hats. Apparently wheat straw is the go to but not modern wheat varieties because they are selectively bread to be short. Nope, the best is heritage varieties. I ended up purchasing and planting Red Fife. It is a Canadian heritage variety that grows to an average of five to six feet tall! That's what I'm talkin' about.

The lovely human that I'm partnered with went and collected some fallen logs and we made an 8 x 14 foot "frame" for the bed that was to grow the wheat. We covered the grass with soaked cardboard to hopefully smother the grass underneath and then covered it with about 12" of loam and some black soil with chunks of clay mixed in. I tried to get as much of the clay chunks as I could but there's going to be some left of course. I hope the wheat will do okay with that depth and/or he able to grow through the cardboard mush.

I looked up row spacing for planting wheat and it was mixed. Some articles say 4 "- 6" spacing gives the highest yields. Other articles are talking about farmers wanting to go to 10" or 14" spacing. Of course this is all info for farmers working with modern strains. I have no idea how that translates to the heritage variety that I planted. I decided to plant mini plots of different spacing to experiment. Ideally I want narrow spacing to maximize the small area that I am working with but we shall see as the growing season goes on. I have 2," 4", 6", and 10" spacing sowed to 1" depth. The 4" spacing has the most seed. I had purchased 250g of wheat berries and sowed all of it. I hope that the sowing density isn't too high not too low. I am not great at math and didn't figure out how to go from X kg / acre to what we have in the front yard.

I'm anxious but also to see the wheat start to peek out of the soil. This is going to be a bit of a journey from seed to harvest. I'm sure to learn a lot.

Next post will hopefully be an update on the germination of the wheat babies.

Ps. If you are wise in the ways of wheat growing, what do I not know that I don't know, but need to know?

I found this kit at a thrift store for $.75 and finally made it. It’s older, geared toward the Boy Scout basketry merit badge, and made from dyed rattan. My version is a little wonky and the rim is a little different, but I was happily surprised by the directions and how closely mine matches the picture. And it holds my last project (obsession), crocheted strawberries, nicely too.