Garden Basket - Oval with Handle

This is my second basket, colorful and textured, sturdy and useful, and the aroma of the wood is therapeutic. It is more complex, bigger and stronger than my first simple round basket. A garden basket, or market basket, is oval in shape (long and narrow) and has a handle, making it convenient to carry at one's side and to hold fresh produce from the garden or the market. Again, the actual weaving took me two full days. Most of the material is from shrubs and trees around the house, from Cindy's orchard and the precious willow from the river bank. The 9 bottom sticks are willow, woven in reverse pairing with 32 rods of willow and cotoneaster. Long red dogwood rods were used for the 28 stakes, which become the border, and were reinforced with 24 short maple sticks. The other 4 stakes are reinforced by the handle. Pale green spindle adds 2 strips of contrast: the base whaling or triple weave (12 rods) and the middle four-rod randing or 2-ply weave (16 rods). The side weavers of dark reddish-green are cotoneaster (28 for French randing or slewing weave near the base, 32 for the four-rod randing just under the plaited or braid border). Thanks to Cindy for the apple tree cuttings that became the two bows of the handle, which were wrapped together with 3 rods of spindle and 2 of dogwood. My fingers are sore, but my pride and satisfaction are dancing joyfully.

Spring equinox budding indoors

I was pruning some cotoneaster shrubs on March 13 just while the ground was still frozen and before the warm weather came. I put some bare branches in a flat vase with a pin holder, and water. To my surprise, on spring equinox day, a week later, the branches were budding and greening my table with spring leaves. What a delight!

Natural winter wreath

What is special about this wreath other than "this is the first I ever made and the materials are prunings of shrubs and straw from the backyard"? The answer is it is ONLY made of prunings WITHOUT any glue, wire or string. It is 100% compostable. Nothing was purchased from the store other than the pruning shears. It holds together by the weaving of the spiraling rods. However, some wire and string were used temporarily during the making process to secure the different parts until everything was blocked into place by the weaving rods.


The base ring is made of fine cotoneaster branches, 18 to 30 inches in length, that were cut during the winter, and immediately assembled into a ring shape before drying, so they would dry into the wanted circular shape. I started by coiling just a few rods to shape a ring of 16 inch in diameter, staggering their butts evenly around the ring, then kept adding more rods. While building the coiled ring, it was held in shape by a few wrapped wires. Once the coil of the ring reached about an inch and a half, the coil was wrapped in a spiraling string and the wires removed. Then it was left to dry for 3 weeks in the garage.


For the final assembly, I used a mixture of fresh cut branches (cotoneaster, spindle, dogwood) and dried straw and weed flowers collected in the fall. I started by small bundles of straw (7 stems together per bunch) secured into place temporarily by wrapped wire or string. After placing each bunch against the inside of the ring, one rod of cotoneaster was spiraled around the ring to block that bunch into place. Eventually the spiraling rods were completely wrapping around all the straw and flower stems. As the work progressed I was able to remove the temporary wires and strings, and the wreath held together simply by the interweaving of the stems and rods.