A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it,
I dropped it,
I dropped it,
And on the way I dropped it.
A little boy he picked it up and put it in his pocket.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in the garden today, harvesting tomatoes, that I thought of this song.  That’s  a leap in logic.  Stay with me.  The scent of tomato leaves always makes me think of my grandfather.  He grew tomatoes almost every year of his life, and I can remember playing in his garden as a child, and the smells of rich earth and tomatoes, always make me think of him.  My grandfather was always full of silly songs and nursery rhymes.  I’m not sure he knew how to relate to his grand-kids when we grew up, but when we were kids, he was the best.

But I digress. I’ve been on a basket kick this week. I’ve finally gotten around to processing the pine needles that came down during hurricane Irene. This is my first one.
I soaked the needles in warm water before working with them, and I left the end caps on the needle bunches. I was hoping that it would add a decorative texture. I’m not sure that it works though. The center is a wrapped coil, and the stitch is an interlocking stitch. There is a good tutorial here at nativetech.org . There aren’t as many tutorials for basket making as I would expect.
When I was first taught coiled baskets, the instructor provided us with long leaf pine needles. Those are soooo much easier to work with. If you want to learn this technique get your hands on some. Still, the shorter needles work fine, but you end up adding a bunch with almost every stitch. It’s a lot of work.  I dried these needles in the shade, which leaves them greenish.  I have some that were sun bleached that I will try later.  This one is going up for sale on ebay. Half of the final price is going to be donated to the Red Cross. (Sort of a thank you to the universe that we suffered nothing worse than a few downed limbs during hurricane Irene.)

The next one is more of a bowl shape.  Creating the curve of the basket is a lot like creating pottery vessels, only much slower.  That makes it much easier to not make mistakes.  Of course, undoing your weaving is a lot more difficult than reforming clay.  This one used a slightly different stitch, a V-stitch.  I’ve also been working on how I photograph things.  The deep window sills I installed in my dining room last fall make a really good light box.  I just need to find a way to cover the screws. This one is a little platter.  I don’t know what you’d do with it, but it’s cute.  I also found while preparing these photos for posting, that baskets make a great subject for Paintshop Pro filters.