Bridgette and I worked on some willow basketry last week at the Echoes in Time gathering in Champoeg, Oregon. We spent the week with our friend Mick and his family with his fantastic vardo.
I have wanted a new pack basket for quite a while and the great Oregon basketmakers provided some excellent materials for the class. I only had eight students for the frame-saw class I was teaching so I was able to work in some baskets around the teaching schedule. I would have loved to document the whole process but I am such a novice that it would have taken three times as long and disrupted the flow of the basket in ways I wasn’t prepared to deal with.
Here is the first round of basket making including the base, addition of spokes, and working with weavers. The various colors come from the different willows harvested at different times. For those truly interested in the weave, this basket consists primarily of wales and rands with the addition of a rim and a foot to protect the bottom.
I’ve made a few other basketry projects under good instructors but this is, by far, my biggest effort to date. I really hope to dive into this craft more deeply sometime in the future. Enough for now, back to Making stuff (right after my nap).
Preindustrial Craftsmanship 
Dammit, would sure have been fun hanging out, glad you two had fun. Rabbitstick?