When it’s time to gather our materials, the actual weaving
of baskets must take a back seat; so not much progress is happening on my cap
at this time. As much as I want to be weaving, the Big Picture is a cycle and a
very time sensitive process. When the
materials are ready, everything else has to wait.
I may have said before, that the very best materials are
from sites that have been either burned in the past few years, or have been
managed. Managing involves cutting back
the plants so that the next year they will want to send out lots of new,
straight shoots. Burning and managing
the plants also tends to minimize the bugs.
Sticks that have spots where bugs have burrowed in must be discarded
because those spots weaken the sticks and they tend to break more often.
New willow produces a very straight shoot which is fairly
white when it dries. Hazel dries a
little darker and it has sort of a zig-zagged straightness – but it’s stronger
than willow.
Following are pictures of hazel and willow gathering and
processing.
Yôotva. Thank you for reading my blog.
Drove to the river twice in the past two weeks to collect
willow. It wasn't quite ready the first trip, but was much
better this past weekend.
This area has been managed. I'm so fortunate to
be able to collect materials in such a beautiful place.
We also collected some hazel this past weekend.
The two bundles on the left are hazel and the two
on the right are willow. Once the materials are sorted
and sized, each pile will be much smaller.
I think I have enough willow for next year (combined
with what I already have), but I'll
need to collect lots more hazel.
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