I went to a basket-making workshop by Polly Sutton, who specializes in cedar bark baskets and has one of her many fabulous baskets on the book “500 Baskets.” I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of Polly or her baskets that were there for us to drool over. We were busy making our own baskets. Here is the start—a 5-3-1 twill according to Polly.
the twill base
We then started twining with black ash and two wire weavers at the same time making a cat’s head shape to the base. This was smaller than I usually tend to weave, but pretty do-able under Polly’s patient tutelage. All the other weavers were making lovely baskets, too.
Now, it’s day 2. This is after an 8 hr day of weaving and at least two more hours in the hotel at night. (a bath afterwards helped to ease out the kinks) We wet the stakes and left the basket with the stakes out to help with the next step of the shaping. I didn’t do my rim out as much as some. 
The corners of the bottom of the basket are the “cat’s head” part. Really, it should be called “cat’s ears”. I like this next picture–you can see the sparkles of the wire and it’s always fun to look inside a basket that you are making.
The finished basket with a Fold, lash and flip rim. I finally learned that. The inside part is the black ash. This is the first time I’ve used this material…really lovely, for sure. 
We made a cute top for it the second day—I will have to post again with those pictures. For now, the final picture is of a group of baskets from our group. We all were happy and look at all the cool baskets. One has the top done, so I probably won’t post another about the top. The teeny-tiny woven stem was good to do on day two. If we had tried on day one, I think we might have been a bit too stressed. I am always amazed how different peoples baskets come out–yet all so cool.
willowwanderings 