Blue Mountain Baskets

Page 13 of 13

What kind of Willow?

2017-11-21 / Andrea / 0 Comments

Fall 2017

These are photos of suspect Willows that grows naturally in our area. We are in a cold part of Zone 4 up on the highest elevations in the Blue Mountains. Some leaves appear to be hybrids of the broader and more slender leaves of other stands. Does anyone recognize hints of what species might be? I’ve numbered the photos for reference if you would like to post a thought in a comment. I will continue to document them through the seasons to include photos of their pussy willows and stems.

I am communicating with our local Grey-Sauble Conservation Authority and the Niagara Escarpment Commission to see if they can help me identify natural Willow species in this area. I will keep you posted on what I find out! There are masses of willow growth along our roads. I live in an area that used to be a small settlement in the lumber era, so I am also not sure if someone had introduced a sally patch decades or a century ago in this area.

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Thanksgiving Centrepiece

2017-10-29 / Andrea / 0 Comments

DIY 2-story Drystacked Fireplace

2017-05-29 / Andrea / 0 Comments

This was a satisfying DIY project at home. We could not afford a real stone fireplace but these concrete dry stack blocks look great. I did use stones from the property to mortar a hearth- complete with a fossil, granite , limestone and shale. The glaciers picked up so much rock as it cruised through this old lake bed, that it dropped so many varieties into our earth!

http://fusionstone.ca/en/dry-stack/

Round Dogwood basket

2017-05-08 / Andrea / 0 Comments

Within minutes of finishing the basket Toulouse squished in for a nap.

So excited after my workshop at Lakeshore Willows (see Catalan base post), I couldn’t wait to find willow to weave back home. Instead I searched our Dogwood for young branchless stems and launched into my first basket from Jon Ridgeon’s book Willow Basketry: A How-to Guide. This is his first project in the book called “Your First Basket”. You can find this chapter for free on his website Jon’s Bushcraft, but I highly recommend ordering his book. As an educator I am impressed with ability to clearly teach and illustrate each step with tips and tricks added for future baskets along the way. He has organized the book in the order of increasing skill-level in each of the categories of baskets, so that by the end of the book you can successfully make 9 different stake-&-strand (round, oval and square) and frame baskets*.

*Editor’s update: Follow my 2018 Basket-a-week challenge as I work through each of Jon’s nine basket projects.

Fresh Dogwood’s lovely colour variation

Round basket in fresh Dogwood

Apple-picking basket with Catalan base

2017-04-30 / Andrea / 0 Comments

Apple-picking basket with Catalan base

Lene Rasmussen at Lakeshore Willows in Wainfleet, Ontario offered a Catalan base workshop in which we could choose the type of basket we wanted to create. She carefully demonstrated each step, we then did it on our own baskets and yet each came out with unique baskets in the end. I have an old orchard of apple trees so thought a basket to sling over my shoulder and rest on my hip when up on a ladder would be a perfect project. The sad part about this basket is that the Catalan base is so beautiful yet is hidden deep down inside! As this was my first workshop with Lene, I practised several different weaves on the sides and experimented with varieties from her own willow crops. I love Lene’s approach to teaching where she shares her own experiences in weaving baskets while adding alternate tips from other instructors she knows. As a true artist Lene encourages uniqueness in what and how we choose to weave.

Catalan base of apple-picking basket

Hearth of Stone from our Land

2017-04-29 / Andrea / 0 Comments

Stone hearth