I'm taking a two week course (every night from 6-9 PM) on cedar bark basketry. It's taught by
Diane Douglas-Willard (that's her gorgeous rattle top basket pictured) and it's held at the
Totem Heritage Center in the middle of town. We - all 14 of us including one man! - sit around a large conference table and weave. (The bag of Halloween candy in the middle supplies us with energy if we feel sapped...)
After we soaked the cedar, we began by connecting eight "spokes" of red cedar with two ends of a long cord of yellow cedar. Diane is a great teacher because as I watched her across the room patiently showing two classmates, I was positive that it would be incredibly complicated to learn. It isn't at all - in fact, it's somewhat simple. The technique starts with two ends of the weaver, a right and a left. The left weaver goes over and under the "spokes," and is snugged up tight. Then you begin again with the new "left" weaver which used to be the right weaver.
The difficulty lies in making the weaving uniform - very hard to do - and also in adding the additional "spokes" or spider legs, as I like to say. You need to have 60-90 of these spokes which means you're adding every other or every two or three spokes.
After two classes, I am nearly finished with the bottom of the basket. Tonight I'll take photos to show you.
