Yesterday my local Spinners Weavers and Dyers group ran a workshop with Mary Crabb, making fabulous little baskets and pods using a traditional basket weaving technique, twining. Traditionally this is used with willow and yarn but we were a bit more textile focussed (naturally 🙂 ) so gravitated towards using yarns throughout.

In the morning we started by working in the round, as with most things, getting started was the tricky bit but after that, the rhythmic weaving in and out became quite hypnotic. These are a few of the “creatures” we made:

This one I particularly liked, I think Janine Rees made it:

And this was my little offering, all of these pieces were only 2-3 inches across:

In the afternoon we moved onto a different technique for the base, ironically this is my favourite part of the little vase I made but is the bit you are least likely to see:

These are the group’s creations mid construction (I don’t think anyone managed to complete their second piece before we had to leave but Mary very generously let us take extra materials home so we could finish our pieces at our leisure):

This is my finished piece, the tension went a little bit wonky around the middle of the bulb but I’m still really pleased with it, I would like to make this again on a larger scale:

Feeling inspired by the workshop, I started to make a felt bowl with the intention of twining fibres in and out of slits made in the sides. I really love this blue slubby yarn but it just doesn’t look right on this pod, it’s a bit too thick. It will be replaced with some hemp yarns I have just ordered, I am thinking 2 or three sets of twining spaced out unevenly across the slits…

I hadn’t realised what it was called when I made these pieces a couple of years ago but I have used twining with felt before, it’s funny how things come full circle…