I've never woven a basket before, esp. using just locally harvested materials. I've shown my artwork in some major high end exhibitions next to some of the current living masters of basket weaving and thought that would be a pretty cool thing to explore someday. However, having seen such masterful work leaves me a bit sheepish even posting mine here! I will anyway, because one has to start somewhere and my goal with this basket wasn't to produce a work of
art. Rather it was about beginning my education in actually doing this. That's what I like about the SKIP program, it's a collection of projects with curated videos to help us learn real skills, and some fun motivation to just give things a try.
So I learned a lot about the very basics of weaving a basket. I began with a bunch of
perennial arugula that has gone to seed and in the process of dying back for the season out in my
greenhouse. I'm not certain how well it will hold up when dried out. It usually seem rather tough when I'm trying to clean out the beds each year. It does provide lots of long, reasonably flexible lengths of material. I wasn't terribly happy with the whole
project during the early stages, almost deciding to just scrap this and do something else with my afternoon, but I stuck with it. As the sides came up I got much more into this, liking the feel of it and inner space being created. Having worked with the irregular arugula and knowing how much of a control freak I am when it comes to fine craft I can tell if I want to pursue this more I will need to find a material where I can get more consistency of thickness and flexibility. Hopefully the bamboo I planted years ago will finely settle in and take off. I noticed last week that at least one patch I had all but given up on looks like it might be doing just that!
Anyway, here is my first basket, created from woven arugula for consideration for this
BB.