I picked up a book last month that made my eyebrows shoot up and my mind start to whirl with possibilities. The book was Pine Needle Basketry: From Forest Floor to Finished Project. I’ve been vaguely looking into make baskets but materials like willow wands or other grasses require lengths of time where they’re drying and, therefore, a considerable amount of forethought. Something I don’t particularly enjoy doing. Pine needles, on the other hand, blanket forests and are already dry and ready to go. All you have to do is bend over, pick some up, take them home and soak them in hot water for 15 minutes and you’re ready to basket! I’ve been using some 3 inch pine needles, some from the tree in front of Simpson and some from where they were innocently clogging a gutter in Franconia. They’re ok, just a wee bit short for my purposes. What I dream about… even aspire to are Florida Long Leaf Pine needles. They’re ten inches long and perfect for big-ish baskets. In the mean time, I made three wee baskets out of the 3 inch needles…

This one is made from the pine needles in front of Simpson. I used hemp to bind the needles together in this one. It’s a bit too thick, but it did stay where I wanted it to. I bought some waxed linen that I haven’t tried… that’s next.

This was my second basket. I used needles from the Franconia gutter and some synthetic sports thread my aunt is lending me. The needles are a wee bit too thin and the thread is really slippery so these baskets aren’t as sturdy as the firs one and took much longer to make.

You can see how the basket is started…

This is a teeny tiny basket. I’m not sure what I would ever put in any of these but they were great practice for bigger, interesting things. Plus they took long enough so that I can gauge how well I’ll be able to stick with this sort of craftiness if I ever did a larger project.