See the size next to the barn on the right & note the vibrant golden colour!
This week was busy, but while at a meeting onsite at the Clarksburg Retreat, I did ask to spend some time walking the trails in search of heirloom willow. The property was the Clendenan homestead which is an age-old name here. One tree by the barn stood out is on this old property saturated in local history. There is a golden weeping willow that looks to be as old as the Victorian house- this type of willow is a common sight here in the Blue Mountains (formerly Collingwood Township).
Here I put my secateurs on the trunk to show the scale of the granddaddy tree.
I know weeping willow is not known as a basket willow because its draping branches do not pass dry-&-re-soak test for strength. They snap & do not bend like good basket willows. Is it a different cell structure that also makes them droopy? But I am tired of listening to conventionalism. We have such wonderful golden weeping willows all over our landscape, so I would like to try to use them in some outside-the-traditional-basket thinking. Here is the result of using the weeping willow branches semi-green (I cut them and then let them mellow a few days while keeping the base branches in water)…
Our 3-hour drive from Kingston to Newmarket turned into 6.5 hours due to a highway closure and jam that was hours long because of it. While my husband had to stay at the wheel, I was able to make lemonade out of lemons by settling into a weaving an Ethernet wire basket. Unfortunately willow weaving is not so portable, but I always have some sewing or wire weaving with me for these long drives. Using the 4 standard wire colours of CAT 5 & CAT 6 wire, I untwisted the CAT 5 to start the base weave and then graduated to the thicker wire as the spacing got bigger.
This week’s focus for my 
Lene taught me how to do the zigzag weave & it paired well with some double French randing in 2 colours.
It is a large basket, so I designed 2 handles by using 6 of the stakes on each side and then modifying a 4-behind-2 border to work around the handles. I can’t really share the steps of how I altered the border to accommodate the handles because it was very much just a feel for keeping the pattern flowing as I went!
