A Tisket, A Tasket,

A little blue/green basket! I forgot all about this piece that I made last month. At the January rug camp, we were able to take a class with Kay Kjeldgaard of Kay's Crafts to make her 5" Snippet Basket. It's a Nantucket-style basket. Since our class was only 2 hours long, and this was really a 4 hour class, she thankfully prepped each piece by gluing in the spokes and starting the cane weavers. Some of us still had some issues with the spokes popping out, but after some glue and patience, we were good to go. I got most of my basket woven during the class, but had to finish it off, with guidance, the next day. The cane was dyed, so the interior has the more solid side where the dye totally took, and the outside of the basket is more mottled, where the dye took here and there.

It has a nice wooden bottom, into which a wonderful little piece of scrimshaw was inserted. Since I already have another of her baskets with a rug hooking hook scrimshaw piece, I chose a lighthouse. This basket is now on my sewing table next to my machine and is used for thread snippets and trimmed fabric pieces. Love it!

Well, since we are on the subject of baskets. . . . . Here's a few pictures of my REALLY favorite type of basket. A basket full of garlic knots from one of my local restaurants. These "evil" knots are made from pizza dough and covered in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and parmesan cheese. YUM! They are rather hard to come by this month, because the area is swarming with snowbirds and tourists. Waiting lists for restaurants and no parking - the downside of life in South Florida in the "Winter".