The stalk of the black fern has a black side and
a red side when it’s gathered mid-summer.
I use the handle of a spoon to run down the stalk, applying enough
pressure to split the two sides. The red side is discarded, and the black side
is scraped with a knife to remove the green pulp. These strips of black fern
are dried and stored, ready to be soaked and used as an overlay material
creating the beautiful shiny black in our baskets.
Scraping the pulp from the stem
The black filaments ready for weaving
No comments:
Post a Comment