Oh man I learned a lot by doing this. For starters, I had no sense of what size branches to grab. I also realized that a small pair of trimmers would have been better than the hedge clippers I was using. I figured out that I did the turn up to the sides wrong and I think it would have been useful to use thinner branches for the bottom, thicker branches to help hold it together as I tried to get the sides to go up, and then medium sized branches for the rest of it. I had trouble keeping the branches down, especially where I had multiple sized of branches. I also kept having breakages, although that didn't happen as much as I thought it would. I also finally figured out the right size of branch and which tree was the best one to harvest from.
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Going out with my hedge clippers to the largest willow tree.
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Grabbing several sizes of branches to try out.
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Twisted the branches into circles in a bucket and filling with water. Later I realized that I could just grab fresh branches and just bend them around my knee.
I've done pine needle basketry before, but never a successful woven basket. For some reason, I thought I'd jump in the deep end and start with a huge backpack harvest basket (there is a blue clothes peg in the second image to give you an idea of scale) - it's 38cm/14in wide and 50cm/20in tall and done with a patterned openwork weaving in harakeke / New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax)
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Flax leaves, starting the basket from slightly dried strips with muka, finished backpack attached to wooden backpack frame
He whai take kore noa anō te kupu mēnā mā nga mahi a te tangata ia e kōrero / His words are nothing if his works say otherwise
Weave a basket - PEP BB textile.sand.basket
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