Dogwood basket as Toulouse emerges from the flowering Dogwood bush.

I harvested fresh Dogwood from the sides of our trails, so they are much younger and therefore greener than the traditional red stalks. Happily though the tips nicely contrasted against the butts in complementary colours of red and green.

Red tips contrast green butts, and the stripped waling adds variety.

The stakes and weavers were cut about 5 days earlier, so they had shrivelled a little which secured the bark. When I made the base stakes from freshly cut pieces, the bark came off easily, so that inspired me to try stripped fresh pieces for the waling.

The fresh cut Dogwood’s bark scraped off easily when making the base cross.

I did a full round of regular French randing and then for fun reversed the direction of the next set of weavers.

I wanted to try a border that would not need super bending since Dogwood is not as flexible as Willow. I discovered a fantastic instructional YouTube video from the Czech Republic by Kajjka Hátleová. This border was done in 3 stages and worked beautifully for the Dogwood.

Marie demonstrates the scale of the basket: it is one half-cat in diameter.