Category: Basketry

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Success!

I finally was able to finish the basket making classes with the Batesville Middle School 7th graders. The weather let up enough for the ice to melt and they had school this week.  Some really nice work, too! There is usually one or two in each class who create really outstanding baskets. I’m proud of each and every one of them!

 

It’s interesting how things go in spurts – we did more scalloped edges with the classes in this session than I’ve done in all the other classes taught here. With the first session of the school year we had more garlic baskets.  Not sure what drives those minds and fingers.

 

Makes me wonder how the work in the final session later in May will turn out.

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This and that

The double wall hat is no more.  With a bit of frogging and restarting, it has morphed into a sweater or vest or something on that order. Still using the two yarns, but knitting them separately. Making stripes and blocks of color, sometimes with a bit of ribbing, mostly just garter stitch. I’ll eventually check it against a pattern to make sure it will fit.  ITMT, it is a comfortable thing to pick up when watching the bit of TV that I do.

 

Working with 7th graders again this week making twined baskets.  Or at least I started today.  We’ll see if I actually get the next two visits in with them this week – the weather event of the winter seems poised and ready to strike our area, which will in all likelihood cause school cancellations.

 

Sure hope we don’t get the ice that is predicted. That is always so tough on the trees, birds and animals.

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Starting October off right

I was  lax on posting last month – sorry!  So, to start October right, here we go:

Yesterday I took 8 women, mostly older than me, into the woods in Kentucky and we pulled grapevines for random weaving. Learned about other invasive plants and how/why they are good or not for basketry. We harvested some fairly large diameter grapevine – it took four or more of us to get some of it down out of the trees.  The women had a blast and felt so empowered by the group strength.  They also made some nice baskets! Sent them home early all tuckered out. I’ll post a picture of the large class basket made from the really heavy vines that we pulled – it was a community project and is already installed at the Kenton County Extension Office garden.

Today I taught four different simple bookbinding techniques to high schoolers at Oldenburg Academy – and for the most part they looked as though they felt accomplished, too.  Always a warm feeling when the ‘aha!’ moment happens and a face brightens.

Tomorrow a niece and her friend are coming to do some papermaking – I cooked up some asparagus stems and leek leaves this afternoon to be ready for them. Also pulled out a bunch of baggies from the freezer with bits of cooked pulp and some already beaten. My love may run away for the day so as to get out of our way!

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Simmer in the summer

Well, there is absolutely no way to avoid the heat and humidity and still be active.  The only activity I’m intent on at the moment is to gather all the supplies needed for the 8 classes I’m teaching at Convergence 2010 Albuquerque.

Dyed some reed this morning for the jelly bean baskets and it is drying out nicely with the heat! I may have gotten the blue a bit on the dark side but it should still weave nicely.

Have some bookboards (aka cereal box cardboards!) to cut for the book classes and then decide how many examples to take for the mudcloth. The black dirt is already taped securely – hoping for lots of reds, etc. to come in with the students.

The best part about gathering my supplies is that I’m doing it in the cool, dry basement!  Any office work (copies of handouts, etc.) gets accomplished in my office which boasts windows and a fan – plus the shade of surrounding trees so it isn’t too terribly hot in there.  Hot enough, though.

Off to the basement to cool down and cut!

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Unplanned time on my hands…

… due to a rejection of an installation proposal.  A bummer – I was really hoping I’d get the nod.

The Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, OH is planning an exhibit titled “Savage Gardens: The Real and Imaginary World of Carnivorous Plants”. I answered their call for proposals for both the site-specific commissioned installation and the juried exhibit piece.

I really had no idea what I would do, so started researching carnivorous plant images on the internet. Things like Venus fly traps and sundews (I think that is what they are called) showed some really nice structures that I thought I could emulate with basketry, paper and gut.  But then I got stuck on the “Imaginary” in the title of the show………

Thus was born, at least on paper, the Veganivorous Random Hogfly Catcher, complete with backstory and symbiotic bug. The plant was to be of large random woven ‘bowls’ lined with handmade corn husk and abaca paper pulp and having pointed stamens ready to pierce the bodies of the hogflies (little hot air balloon critters with wings and curly tails). It all sounded good on this end, including all the details on recycled materials and renewable resources. Thirteen flowers on stalks ranging 4′-10′ high. A number of Hogflies were  to be suspended from the rafters or on the ‘flowers’.

The veganivorous part comes from the fact that the plant, while in the carnivorous family, chose not to actually eat the bug, but to suck the air out of it, leaving the bug shell alone.  And of course, the bug was to be made of pork sausage casing. Lots of intended plant/animal connections and puns in the whole thing.

I had carefully thought about all the steps involved, what would have to be done first, etc. and how much time it all would entail. I factored in several teaching gigs already scheduled and two planned week-long trips and figured I had just enough time to construct all the pieces of the installation, including its base, before the first of July when it was due in Columbus.

BUT, the Hogfly Catcher is extinct before it even had a chance to live.  And I now have 6 weeks back in my life with which to do something else, or maybe a lot of something elses.