Basket Weaving Marathon

For some reason this weekend turned into a basketry marathon. Or, more appropriately, a basket finishing marathon. Maybe because I'm trying to get organized or maybe because my daughter made a comment that I never finish anything, I decided to get working on those baskets that were almost finished but just needed a rim.

First was a pie basket that has been awaiting a rim for, yes I am cringing, a year and a half. I don't have a photo of it because it came out blurry. Maybe later.

Next was the basket above that was started about a year ago in a class taught by Anne Coleman. The base is wooden and the dividers that you see are part of the base. It was woven with cane in a continuous under 1, over 1, under 1, over 2 pattern which makes a narrow and a wide diagonal pattern. It is already full of basket making tools and reed, so I guess that makes it a keeper.

Three of these four baskets are new and needed a rim and handles. The fourth was one I carried as a purse for about a year and broke a handle and the rim. I just repaired it, so I could use it again.They were made before the house was built, so that means they've been sitting for over 2 years. Maybe my daughter has a point. Maybe that should have been my resolution. "Do not start a new project until all others are finished." But I had an excuse with these baskets, really, I did. All the handles were hand shaped from heavy reed and were a pain to do. Now that the baskets are finished, I'm thinking I should have used a thinner reed for the rim. The tops are really stiff.

The pattern for these baskets came from Lyn Siler's, The Ultimate Basket Book because I wanted to weave something more challenging than I was getting in the classes offered on campus. They were that, but the final result was worth it. The peach one was woven with colored stakes and the pink with colored weavers which reverses the pattern. Woven in all natural makes the design more subtle. You have to stand away from it to really see it.

And last, but not least was this one. I had the reed cut for this basket, but had never made it. It is small, but was tricky to get the shaping right. The pattern was by Patti Hawkins, but I made it in 1/4' reed rather than 11/64, so it is about twice as large as the pattern. Notice the rim is complete. It isn't the standard rim, but uses only one piece of 3/8" flat oval with the stakes folded over on the outside and lashed as you go. Tedious but the entire basket was done start to finish in one sitting.

By the way, cable ties are God's gift to basket makers.

Keeneland Green

Keeneland Green
Originally uploaded by tormash9

For some reason I get stuck on rims. I have about 10 baskets at home that have been completed except for the rim. There should be a term for it, since I know others who have done the same thing. Rimophobia, maybe. And a co-worker asked me to finish the rim on her basket. Little did she know.

But over the break I was determined to beat this brick wall and at least get the rim on Carol's basket. While I was at it I also finished this one that I made about a year ago. This is an Anne Coleman pattern called Keeneland Green. The design in the center can vary and for this basket I chose a diamond pattern. Last year for Christmas I gave a basket woven in this pattern with an arrow in the center to my nephew's wife Ashli. This one I think I'll keep as a wastebasket in the living room.

Christmas basket weaving

Over the Christmas break I remade this basket. Yes, I took it completely apart and put it back together again. I filled it too heavy and when it was picked up one side pulled out from the wooden base and the handle pulled loose from the stakes. Yikes, back to the drawing board. I adapted this pattern from a huge tote bag I made in a class and put it on a wooden base rather than a woven base. Obviously the stakes weren't close enough together to hold everything securely.

This is a large basket with a wooden base 11 1/2" by 18". The stakes alternate between 1/2" brown and 5/8" natural. They were glued into the slot this time around. Three rows of twining with #2 round reed secure the bottom and weaving is done with 1/4" flat oval, 1/2" flat flat natural and 1/2" flat flat brown.

The handle was woven into the basket and the rim is 5/8" half round lashed with 5mm cane. I may have to make another one to keep since my girls have been wanting laundry baskets. This one goes to Minnie.

1000 Mile Club

OK, now I feel like a real wimp. Here's an 82 year old man who walked his 1000 miles in 146 days. And I'm already behind for this year.

New Year's Resolutions

Do you know that if you walk 2.73 miles a day every day of the year you will have walked 1000 miles? Not too bad, huh? At a brisk pace it would take about 45 minutes a day. But, if you get lazy and skip days, you end up walking 5 or 6 miles a day for the last two weeks of the year.

Back at the beginning of 2007 I signed up for the Richmond Parks Department 1000 Mile Club. (Actually I signed up for 2006 and quit in May.) December 31st I walked two miles to total 1000.5 miles walked in 2007 and to complete my first ever New Year's Resolution.

I think I'm going to try it again. Along with quitting Pepsis and taking the GRE. Success must go to my head. Finish one resolution and I think I can handle 3 this year. Pepsi will definitely be the hardest.

#21 Mashups

For some reason I've had a real mental block about this lesson, so today I went back and looked at the Mashup Awards page again. This time I found a couple that were really interesting.

Quintura for Kids was a great search engine that let kids select a broad subject and narrow it down using tag clouds. For example, I selected 'around the world' from the main menu. Selections including holidays, Canada, countries, maps, history and others were shown. Clicking on 'holidays' gave me more options including Christmas, Halloween, Boxing Day and more. Selecting 'Boxing Day' gave me seven child appropriate web sites which described the history of Boxing Day and how it was celebrated. The page is bright, colorful and easy to use.

The next interesting mashup I found was Access Denied. This mashup was created by Global Voices Advocacy which is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online. The mashup maps countries where censorship has occurred and web sites have been blocked. When the bubble is clicked details are given about various sites that have been blocked. Yes, you guessed it, many of these are the Web 2.0 sites we have been learning about. The most commonly blocked site is YouTube followed by Flickr, Blogger, Typepad, Google Earth and many others. One very interesting thing about Global Voices is that they are using many of the Web 2.0 technologies on their website, including a blog, a wiki, and a mashup.

Also I finally got the Bookr mashup to work. You can see the results on this post. And now I'm finished with all the Learning 2.0 lessons! Yes!

Thanksgiving Day Basket

For some reason I seem to spend some part of every Thanksgiving break making a basket. The girls are always with their dad and it is so quiet that I feel the need to keep busy so I don't go nuts from the quiet.

This year I decided to do something a little different. For starters I actually made the base for this basket out of some scrap cedar left over from building my house. Since I haven't posted anything else about that building project I'll jump ahead and say that the staircase to the loft and the wall around it are finished in red cedar. I love the smell and the rustic look. But back to the basket. I finally found a router bit that will cut a 1/16" slot in a piece of wood which is exactly what is needed for a basket base. It's called, amazingly enough, a 'slot cutter.'

I started with a small scrap, about 2 1/2 by 4 inches to make a business card basket. An odd number of 1/4" flat oval stakes are woven in a continuous over two, under two pattern giving it a diagonal look. A 3/8" flat oval rim finished it off lashed with fine cane.

Now for the critique.

• The corners of the base should have been rounded. That would have allowed for a stake in each corner and made the weaving more even.


• The dark brown stakes really don't match the reddish purple of the base. So experiment with other stake colors.


• It is way too large because I'm not used to making a basket that small. In fact this is the smallest basket I've ever made. You could stack two lifetimes of business cards and still not fill it.

Any other critiques?

I usually give away most of the baskets I make, and then I never even remember what they look like. As I was reading some knitting blogs where knitters use their blogs to journal their knitting projects I thought that might be a great place to keep up with the baskets I make. I looked for basketry blogs, but couldn't find any.