GETTING STARTED: I don’t remember what made me suddenly interested in making baskets. My mom had gone through a period of making baskets in the 1990s, and though I thought they were amazing, I was busy with small children and a new teaching career and had no interest in making them. I have dozens of those baskets now, and use them all time. But somehow, since buying the farm, I was bitten by a basket-making bug, and now really really really wanted to make them myself. I was about to become a beginner again!
What started it? Perhaps the catalyzing moment was a walk on the prairie with Courtney Masterson in Amber Thumann’s Permaculture Design Course, when Courtney started pointing out which native prairie plants contained fiber that indigenous people used for various weaving. Dogbane, yucca, rattlesnake master, milkweed. Taking pieces of them and playing with them as we walked. We had all of those things growing in our pastures. And a whole bunch of other weavable stuff. I was about to start a deep dive into weaving from wild materials.
That first year, I harvested milkweed and dogbane from our pastures, rough-leafed dogwood from the edges, willow from our giant willow trees, wisteria and honeysuckle and English ivy from the overgrown parts of our yard, daylily and iris leaves from fall gardens everywhere. What a plethora of materials!
What to do with them?
Here are some of the early trials, just to see what it’s possible to do:
Many more basket adventures to come!!! (especially as the cultivated willow matures…..)
Fig Hill Farm & the Kansas Figgery 