When Life Gives You Grapevines…Start Making Baskets!

..make wine, right? Well, yeah, but there’s so much more! Get making baskets!

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making a basket, but it was never anything I took seriously. I mean, most people tended to look at me and say “huh?” when I used to mention any of this country crafty stuff. (Remember, in my prior life, I lived in the big city.) “Make. A. Basket? Like, you’d sit down and weave stuff into a basket shape? Can’t you just buy what you want?”

Sigh.

My interest was put aside until recently, when my local friend said she wanted to make baskets from grapevines growing wild all over her property. (And mine. They are everywhere in the forest surrounding our houses, as muscadine grapes grow wild all over out here.) She was thrilled to find a kindred spirit, someone who also had gotten the “huh?” look throughout the years.

Yay, two people weird enough to actually try this out!

So yesterday found us out in the south 40, clippers in hand, gathering long sections of vines from the tall tree branches. Two piles later, we sat down on the grass and began to read the directions. While we should have really perused them better earlier, if we had, I may have been intimidated. Four pages long! I’m more of a ‘get the general idea and go from there’ kinda person, so I wasn’t too bugged when the wind blew the directions away.

First came the spokes! This ends up being basically the frame of your entire basket.

Then the real work began: weaving the additional pieces in to make the bottom and sides.

Look! It’s starting to look like a basket!

That’s my friend’s basket. See the difference?

In the end, two gorgeous baskets! (One was labeled ‘relaxed,’ and the other? Not relaxed. Actually, it was called ‘anal’ for being too ‘stick to the rules.’ And that wasn’t mine!!)

I would definitely do this again! Lots of work but a great memory, conversation piece and homemade decor.