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A Basket for a Legacy Bead
Ever since I received a legacy Maunche “medallion” lampwork bead, I have been planning to make a transport/storage basket for it, just big enough to safely contain it and hold a small scroll listing its legacy. I love the idea…
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Dandelion Stalks
Every May, the dandelion season comes to visit! For the last two years I have collected tall dandelion flower stalks to try out in basketry and cordage. These hollow, stems dry and rehydrate very nicely. I found that I get…
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Late Antique Egyptian Shoes (1st shoe)
In the course of combing through museum catalogues to learn more about life in late antique Egypt, I came across a few pairs of ornate leather shoes. This opened up a whole new research burrow to explore, and what I…
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Egyptian oval basket progress
I finished the main body of my Egyptian-style oval basket earlier this year. Once the sides were about an inch shorter than the intended finished height, I rotated where I was holding the core to the inside face of the…
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Willow Bark Basket Class 2025
I taught several classes at the local “Hunter’s Moon” event on Labor Day Weekend this year. The last one was a make-and-take small willow bark basket class. This was the first time I did this kind of basketry class. (I…
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Nettle fiber (part 2)
My nettle fiber experiment continues! You can read Part 1 here. After the initial peeling and rubbing of the outer layers, I still needed to remove some flakes of the outer skin and separate the fibers more consistently. I tried…
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“Basketry and Plants” Page Updates
I recently updated the Basketry and Plants page with annotated lists of useful books, journal articles, and online sites/repositories. The Basketry resources list already includes books that cover foraged basketry materials, but they do not focus heavily on how to…
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Nettle Update: Spinning Thread
I tried spinning a small amount of my nettle fiber that I “hackled” by pulling it repeatedly through one of my double-row wool combs. What was left looked very nice and straight. I wanted to see if I could spin…
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Experimenting with Red Twig Dogwood
This spring I received the sad news that the founder of the first household I officially joined in the Society had died unexpectedly. It was just eight months after the loss of one of my dearest friends and a highly…
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Nettle Fiber (part 1)
In late winter this year I discovered by happenstance that the larger stems I had left standing in my nettle bed had achieved an excellent level of breakdown (“retting”) to free the bast fibers from the green gunk and woody…
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