Its My Birthday and I'll Play If I Want to....

I am still 12...That never changes.  Well, the six year old mentality runs amok once in a while, but I don't intend to get old.

So far, Walter brought home breakfast from Mc Donalds.  I got a card from him with an Amazon gift certificate and the promise to let me pick something out at the gem show.  My favorite kind of gifts.  Books and stones.

The other "so far" is finishing this basket this morning.  I know it's not beautiful, but I like it.  It's my first try at paper basket making. I hope to get better as I make more.

Information on how to do this jumped out at me a couple of days ago on the net.  It was strange.  Once I saw the one video on U Tube, I started looking around and found more info...The first one was a Russian site on how to make the weavers. Then one of the European needlework blogs that I have been following for about a year had an entry about it yesterday.  Strange.

It seems that this is the thing to be doing in the eastern European countries right now.

http://makkirequ.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-08-21T00:31:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false&m=0

I found this blog.  I can't read it but it translates with Bing.  They are even holding days in the part where people get together to weave these baskets.

On the same blog there is all kinds of jewelry and even furniture made out of this!

The more I looked,the more I wanted to try it.  So....I grabbed the latest issue of "Traditional Homes" magazine and went to work.  Making the reeds from magazine pages is hard at first, but it gets easier as you go. It makes for a very sturdy basket.

The basket that you see is the whole issue.  Each page is cut into 4 lengthwise strips and rolled on a size 1 knitting needle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFpl1Lgh3Rg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
This is a Russian site that shows you how to do it. 
On the side bar of this page there are a lot of other videos showing how different people do them. 

Anything that you would twine with round reed, you can twine with the magazine pages.  The weight and strength of the finished basket is almost the same as a reed basket, or at least it would be with a lot of experience making them.  I ran onto photos of some that had been dyed and looked just like reed baskets.


The ultimate paper baskets are made by this man in Korea.  He is a third generation basket maker and is fascinating just to watch. If you don't go to any of the other sites, do look at this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRV3v9eAWqs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Thank you for all of the kind words about Mookie.  I am sure that he is somewhere grinning ear to ear over the attention.

This is the day of the peyote stitch lesson, so the rest of the afternoon will be devoted to beads.  That's also play for me.

Tomorrow I will go back to serious mini work.

See you then.