Cedar Bark Basket Ta-Dah!

Up early and off I drove over hill and dale in the snow... through Boring, Oregon.. I saw a Boring couple go into a Boring store and some Boring children go into the Boring School. :-)  My Cedar Bark Basket class began at 9 am, there were 5 students.  The instructor was delightful and gave us each a printed instruction sheet.  She told us how she harvested bark from red and white cedar trees and showed us each how to take a thick strip of cedar and split it into 2 pieces and how to trim it into even 1/2 inch strips for our baskets.  Here is the base of my basket.

This is her basket next to the instruction sheet. 

This is what the inner bark looks like before it's cut into workable strips.

Here are 2 of the strips that I split and myself. 

And 4 of them I cut and trimmed. 

A larger photo of the beginning. 

Two of my classmates hard at work. 

After you have the base woven, you take waxed linen or hemp and plait it around the woven part - this holds your base in place as you turn the cedar strips up to continue weaving. 

This is the hardest part.. getting the first two strips going up the side.  Kind of like wrestling a wiggly snake.   

Here is our instructor checking our work. 

You do the bottom two rows and then twine 2 rows of waxed linen to hold things into place.  Two rows of cedar bark and then we did a 3 ply of Sweet Grass in the center. 

Two more rows of cedar and another two rows of triple twined Sweet Grass...  

 Almost to the top!

At the top is 2 rows of waxed linen and one row of triple plied Sweet Grass - then you bend the cedar down and sew them down inside with the waxed linen and end it with a decorative zig zag of the waxed linen which further holds down the cedar strips inside and makes the basket more secure.

Here are all 5 of the student baskets with the instructors lidded basket on top.  We were not able to finish our lids before the class ended, but got a good start on them. I finished weaving the lid of my basket when I got home last evening.

Here is my basket with the finished lid! :-)

Here's another shot.  I'm so happy with it and proud of it -- it was a lot of work but it was worth it.  Have you ever woven a basket?  It's really neat!  I'm planning to take other basket classes there at the Damascus Fiber Arts School!

When I awoke this morning the world was white with snow.  I had a Portland Women's Forum meeting and decided that since the roads were pretty good I would not cancel it.  But it sure was pretty!

Pretty red barn in the snow.   

Our cozy little farmhouse.

The barn. 

Another exciting thing happened yesterday while I was at the basket class.  My spinning instructor called and she had come into the possession with a huge bunch of spinning and yarn things from a storage unit that had been left unpaid - and knowing I like Alpaca to spin she offered some to me a few weeks ago which I gladly offered to take.  Finding that I was there at the school she brought two big bags of Alpaca and gave it to me!  I asked her what colors and she said ALL COLORS.. I openend them last night after I got home and was delighted to see this pretty white and reddish alpaca....

A huge bunch of chocolate brown Alpaca.... 

Some yummy creamy white Alpaca... 

And two bags of beautiful shiny black Alpaca..  

I thought of my fellow blogger and friend Lucy from Lucy In The Sky blog - as she was given a huge lot of raw Alpaca fiber too.. my entire dining table is covered with bags of Alpaca! Yikes!  LOL!!  OK, now I'm going to relax for a while.. life has been non-stop lately. Thanks for visiting and I adore your comments!  ((hugs)), Teresa :-)