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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Look Out for the Snake!!!!

Well... Still no sign of Tessie. I do believe that she is in a snit because I decided to do a couple of real sized baskets this morning.

I don't think Widget got her, because he is trying to eat everything in sight.

He has been protecting me from "snakes" all morning.

It's kind of hard to work on a basket with him tugging on the filler rope.


I had started the yellow/orange basket some time ago. I am finishing the larger baskets so that people will have something that they can pick up and look at when I do the talk in a couple of weeks.

The yellow/orange basket has a filler of jute rope and the coiling is done with six strand floss. Don't start one of these unless you have a lot of floss on hand. I probably used at least 25 skeins on this one basket. It is done just like the minis in a figure 8 binding stitch every four wraps.


I started another one using cotton clothes line rope and again floss. someone gave me a whole sack of various shades of light brown....What you see there is a whole skein. This one is just a plain "Lazy Squaw" stitch....I dislike that term. The Native American women that make the originals of this type of baskets are in no way lazy. They go out and harvest plants to weave with and do all of the prep work, as well as the weaving. I do wish someone would come up with a new term for this type of weaving.

I added the pair of needle nose pliers for size comparison. The pliers are about 5" long. Using the larger rope and a double strand of floss, this is more of a comparison to the 1:12 size than the other basket. I use two strands of the six strand floss on the small ones and 32 gauge wire.

Now about Tessie....After I finish this basket, I will go looking for her, snit and all. I am sure that she will have something to say about yesterday....That's why I am not looking too hard right now.

Back to work.

See you tomorrow.

4 comments:

JDayMinis said...

You better find Tessie soon, I would suspect Widget! She may not be minding all the affection. What a fabulous basket!!!! I can tell our Sippers is much lighter in weight than you Widget. She is so thin now since she has had diabetes for a few years *Jean

Lataina said...

That's a really pretty basket! I find it funny that your CAT is four times the size of my DOG.....LOL. =)

Jollie said...

Waht a beautiful basket you've made Casey, I love it!
That is a pretty difficult technique, but very very gorgeous :)

Hugs, Jollie

Merri said...

This looks familiar. Our cats are persistant in trying to 'rescue' me from wiggly looking things. The orange and turquoise basket is to die for, it's so lovely!

Hm..Tessie's not around? I bet she's testing you..to see how much you miss her. She may also have a request that you will only fill if you are relieved that nothing has happened to her. Heehee, she's a wily witch..very clever.