SNOWTIME

Had to get up out of my nice warm bed this morning to pick up my dear friend and fellow basketry artist Suni Lopez from the station.  She was delivering work for the Basketry Exhibition at Art Hub Gallery on Sunday 19th February to celebrate the launch of Practical Basketry Techniques.

I should have kept quiet about the mild winter so far.  Now 'the North wind doth blow and we shall have snow.'  My north facing back garden gets the full blast and I've not even dared to venture out to look for snowdrops.  I'll just enjoy the picture I took of them in the woodland garden at Hodsock Priory in Nottinghamshire - they open for a Snowdrop walk every February.

A few years ago we went to Suni's allotment to cut the brilliant yellow stems of the vigorous willow she'd grown from a small cutting - probably a variety of Salix vitellina.  I took them home and began to make a random weave sphere in my back garden.  It shone in the early spring sunshine like a golden orb reflecting the acid greens of Euphorbia characias. 

The very next day it snowed! - in April! and my golden orb turned into a giant snowball.

My back garden with snow

Interlaced willow snowball illustrated in Practical Basketry Techniques

I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy making these off-mould interlaced spheres.  They're pretty simple once you've established the initial framework with a series of circular hoops.  You can hold the hoops in place with string or cable ties until you've done enough weaving to keep everything together.  After that it's just a case of weaving each new rod under/over wherever you need to fill a gap.  I found it easiest to put the butt end in first and weave away the tips. 

You can make these spheres in any size, from whatever material you have in your garden.  I have a rampant Clematis montana that needs a good sorting every summer after it's flowered.  The older, thicker stems are great for interlacing projects.  I made a small sphere from wild clematis and honeysuckle as an alternative to the Button Ball lampshade project we did for 'Practical Basketry Techniques'. 

                             My co-author made the smaller sphere from raffia and twisted wire. 

You could hang a sphere from a tree or pergola as my friends in Brighton did.  They've found it's become very popular with small birds who take food from the bird-feeders into the ball to enjoy a leisurely snack out of reach of predators.

A willow sphere like this should last for about 3 or 4 years outside - then you'll just have to make another one.

Check my website for details of workshops where you can learn lots more basketry techniques for your garden. http://www.stellaharding.co.uk/

New beginnings

Christmas has gone and the New Year is just beginning.  Midwinter can be a bleak, slack time in the garden.  If you're a tidy-minded gardener you'll have cut down the stems of perennial plants, swept up fallen leaves and mulched the borders leaving only the structural outlines of ornamental shrubs and evergreens for seasonal interest.  Alternatively, you might be the sort of hopeless romantic who prefers to leave everything to overwinter in the hope that a sharp hoar-frost will delicately trace the outlines of tall grasses and seed heads.  Either way you probably won't have a lot to do outside for the first few weeks of the new year.  So, rather than stand with your nose pressed against a cold window pane wishing you could be outside, this is a great time to hunker down with a nice warm drink, a plateful of hot-buttered things and a crafty project to get you dreaming of spring plantings and summer crops.

As the new season's seed and bulb catalogues come plopping through the letter-box, don't throw out the old ones, you can recycle them instead into a plaited container for your seed packets or plant labels.

Colourful seed packets can be a wonderful source of inspiration - not only for planting schemes but for all manner of creative projects.  This lattice display in a DIY store gave me the idea for a bias plait basket made from glossy plant catalogues that were just too sumptuous to put in the recycling bin.

Folding the paper length ways into strips makes for a sturdy long-lasting basket and the fold-down border accentuates the bias-checkweave design.  It's a quick and simple re-cycling project for a cold and rainy day and just the thing to chase away the January blues. You'll find the full recipe in my forthcoming book 'Practical Basketry Techniques' published by A&C Black.

Machiavelli's Lawn

Front cover of Practical Basketry Techniques

Christmas is coming and I've decided to ask Santa for a copy of 'Machiavelli's Lawn: the Great Writers' Garden Companion' by my friend Mark Crick; writer, photographer, cook and erstwhile gardener.  This is a follow-on to his two previous books, 'Kafka's Soup: a Complete History of Literature in 17 Recipes' and 'Satre's Sink: the Great Writers' Complete Book of DIY'.  All take the form of a collection of literary parodies of great writers.   

As the publication date of  'Practical Basketry Techniques' approaches my mind is turning to thoughts of what anyone might have to say about it.  I've already been asked by A&C Black's publicist to supply names of potential reviewers.

I sat next to Mark a couple of weeks ago at the Royal Albert Hall for a concert of Mahler's 8th Choral Symphony.  He was signing a copy of 'Sartre's Sink' for a friend in the row behind and, just before the orchestra struck up, I made the mistake of having a quick look.  He had pre-empted any adverse criticism by compiling a list of spoof reviews which appear on the back cover:

'Unbearably light'  - Milan Kundera

'Nauseating' - Jean-Paul Sartre

'Not worth the wait' - Samuel Beckett

I had to stifle my giggling fits all the way through the concert! - the 8th is one of Mahler's less sombre works but still not exactly a bundle of laughs.

What I found even funnier was that, after the show, Mark told me how his American publicist, who didn't 'do' irony, had tried to persuade him to make the reviews a little more up-beat.

'But Mark, these just sound so negative, we don't wanna put people off buying it!  Couldn't we say 'Worth the wait', by Samuel Beckett instead?'

I took part in an exhibition with Basketry Plus at the Barbican a couple of years ago.  We called it 'The Upsett' which is a technical basketry term.  We liked the slightly negative hint of provocation in the double meaning.

Well, you can probably guess where this train of thought is heading. 'Practical Basketry Techniques' by Stella Harding and Shane Waltener:

'Upsetting' - Basketmaking Monthly

LOVE CRAFT, LOVE GARDENING? you are in the right place

Here's me and Scarlett in the lotty (allotment) picking strawberries in our freshly crafted strawberry pottles.  We've used colourful, child-friendly, recycled materials to bring an ancient basketry technique bang up-to date.

Scarlett heaven!

Strawberry Pottle illustrated in Practical Basketry Techniques

You can find out more about how to make a recycled pottle like this in 'Practical Basketry Techniques' by Stella Harding and Shane Waltener.  Published by A&C Black - out in the UK 16th February 2012.  USA May 12th.