Basket Case

I'm a bit of a basket case, I love baskets! Baskets of all shapes, styles and purposes. I guess one of things I like most about basketry is the textile nature of it. Woven, knitted, knotted, crocheted and sewn things have always been a favorite of mine and baskets are like a more solid version of that!

Before the interesting adventure of "pregnancy carpal tunnel" started last summer, I was having great fun with making my own little baskets! It started out with a terrible little thing made from dry and brittle day lilly sticks, but I soon had a brilliant idea. As with everywhere around here we have and almost limitless supply of this fast growing vine known as virginia creeper.  It's not  at all like poison ivy and though you wouldn't want to eat the berries, simple using the vines isn't going to give you any problems.





I was able to make two nice specimens before my fingers started giving me problems and I'm so pleased with them! I love gathering cherry tomatoes with the small one and the bigger is just lovely.So without further adue I shall share with you how easy it is to do!


First it's a good idea to make sure what you have is virginia creeper and not some other nasty fiend! Virginia creeper looks like the above picture, it's sets of 5 leaves make it very easy to identify.

Your next step would be to gather as many as you can or at least as many as you think you'll use.

After that's finished strip off all the leaves(I threw them in my compost pile).

Next choose the strongest straitest pieces of vine for your base, make sure these ones are thick but not dry or brittle. You have to have at least two but I'd suggest a minimum of four, this was going to big a bigger basket so I used 8. As you may be able to see, I took the four thicker ones and cut a slit in the middle about an inch long to pull the other four through before I began binding them together and weaving, you don't have to do this, but I think it makes it easier and stronger.

Beggin your weaving, there are a million posts and videos online about basket making so I won't go into to much detail.

Continue weaving till you get the size you want for the base, bend your base spokes up and add more if necessary. Weave upwords till you have the desired hight, make handles and bind off (sorry I don't have any pictures of these steps).

And there's the finished product! I love my basket.