Primitive basketry 2: Weaving willow baskets 🧺

Winter is the season to harvest willow rods for basketry: No leaves to remove and the wood is very flexible. Ideally, these rods are left to dry for a year before weaving, but they can also be used as fresh "greenwood" (these baskets might get a bit loose as the wood dries out). I made some baskets and stored the rest of my harvest to dry.

As this was my first foray into willow basketry (though I had made some smaller ones before out of burdock, pine needles, and blackberry brambles), I made a couple of beginners mistakes. Here are some of things that I've learned:

Don't use rods that are too thick as weavers. For my first try (the basket on the left in the group photo), I gathered a lot of rods that turned out to be too stiff.

The upright staves for the walls should all be of the same strength. Otherwise, the stronger ones will pull outwards more than the others, resulting in a wonky shape.

Try to leave all the rod ends on the inside of the basket, the results will look much more tidy this way.

The rim I made in the video is a very simple one - it works, but it's not very grippy. I later went back and gave it the traditional basket rim - unfortunately I lost the footage. Please check out the links below for proper tutorials if you're interested.

The small basket on the right of the trio was my third attempt, where I was able to put some of these learnings into practice.


Recommended resources:

"Lovely Greens" four-part basketry tutorial for beginners:    • How to Weave a Willow Basket - Part 1  

Hanna Van Aelst's basketry channel:    / @hannavanaelst  

How to make bone tools like the one shown in the video:    • Bone tools 2: Primitive bone knife, chisel...  


While willow does work for friction fire, there are better options if you can find them. In my experience, poplar works very well and linden (lime) is also very good. I haven't quite figured out willow yet, sometimes it works and then it just doesn't.

#primitiveskills #basketry