The Long Basket-making Yurt-shop Fundraiser Story

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    Thank you for your interest in the basket-making yurtshop fund-raiser.  This is the story of how I arrived at this point in my basket-making journey.

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    In May of 2000, my mom, my son, and I moved to Acworth, New Hampshire, to homestead.  While camping out for the summer, we immediately began carving a spot out of the all-wooded land my mom had purchased.

    Over the past 16 years, because of our homesteading, homeschooling lifestyle, we have pursued learning many new skills – weaving, wood-carving, basic wood-working and building (hand tools only), simple leather-working, and beekeeping.  We have raised chickens for meat and eggs and my son had a team of steers.  We have had sheep, a cow, ducks, guinea hens, and a horse, venturing into many areas previously unfamiliar to us.

    One skill was especially elusive.  I wanted to learn to weave baskets, but every time I thought it would work out, something happened to interrupt the plans.

    In 2012, I was a vendor at the Newport Farmer’s Market, selling sheepskins, soap, candles, garlic, walking sticks, honey, and wood-burned gourds.  My “neighbor vendor” had a lovely basket which she said she had made at a basket-making workshop.  In talking with her, I was pretty sure the man who taught the workshop  must have been the same man I had spoken with years before at the Sunapee Fair, who happens to be a neighbor of this lady. 

    I had attempted a couple little basket projects on my own years before (two “nose-baskets” for my son’s steers so they would walk across grassy areas without stopping to eat before we got them to the area we wanted them to graze, and one little basket), but I didn’t have anyone to show me the ropes, and they weren’t very impressive. 

    In the fall of 2012, my new friend from the farmer's market asked her neightbor basket-maker - the man I had met all those years ago - to teach a basket-making workshop at her house.  I was able to attend the workshop and finally made my first real basket – a pack basket.   At that first workshop, I meticulously documented and photographed each step so I would be able to do it on my own at home. 

    A month later, my friend hosted a second basket-making workshop, which I also attended, making a double pie basket.  I was hooked.

    I am not a very courageous person, but I really wanted to learn to make baskets better, so I contacted the instructor, asking him if he had ever had, or would consider having, an apprentice.  I was pretty sure that if he would even consider it, he would prefer to take on someone younger.  (I won’t say how old I was, but my son was 20.)  His response was – let’s get together and talk.  We met at the Village Store in South Acworth.  It turns out that he was in his 40s when he started making baskets, so my age was not an issue to him, and after our meeting, he was ready to go ahead with the apprenticeship.

    I started going to his shop one day per week and making baskets, one after another, for practice.  I had assured him right away that I just wanted to learn to make baskets for myself and that I wasn’t planning to start selling baskets and edge in on his market.  He was the one who encouraged me to go ahead and make baskets to sell. After a while, he told me he’s been making baskets for at least 20 years and he’s kind of burned out.  He likes teaching workshops, and that’s what he prefers to be doing at this point.  (He is a good teacher and he does a lot of workshops.)

    For the next 3 ½ years, I continued making baskets in the basket-making shop off and on, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the season and what else was going on in my life.

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    In December of 2015, I met a woodworker from Vermont.  When he found out I was a basket-maker, he said he had some information I might be interested in.   Not long before, a man had approached him saying he had a whole basket shop’s worth of tools, equipment, and materials he would like to sell.  This man wasn’t interested, but had kept the phone number, and passed it on to me.

    I contacted the man, Ed, who lived in a nearby town,  and arranged to go see what he had.  I asked my basket-making mentor to look it over too, since he has many years of experience and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking at. 

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Here is Ed’s story . . . 

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    Years ago, Ed and his wife met a man in Vermont who was making baskets.  When they left, Ed told his wife, “When I retire, I want to make baskets.” 

    Years later, Ed was ready to retire and said to his wife – “Do you remember that man in Vermont?”  She did.  “Let’s go find him.”  So they did.  It just so happened that the man was ready to sell his equipment, and they made a deal.

    Now, seven or eight years later, Ed was ready to sell the equipment, and told Scott, who told me. 

    The especially interesting connection to this equipment is that it is the old Basketville equipment (Putney, Vermont), before they shipped their jobs overseas, and that is where my grandma used to work.  She may have used some of this very equipment.

    This equipment will allow me to make baskets of white ash, rather than reed, which is what I have been using.  I would be able to make baskets completely of locally-harvested wood.  Additionally, I would not have to buy so many materials since I could make my own weaving strips, rims, and handles.  Materials costs for the baskets I have been making are about $25-$35 per basket.

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    So, for about six months, I was trying to figure out how to make the purchase, but couldn’t come up with a way to pull it off financially.  I also had the difficulty of not having a place to set it all up to use it even if I did own it.

    In May, 2016, my son came home for the weekend and asked what I was thinking about the equipment.  I told him I was trying to figure out how to do it.  He kindly and generously offered to put up the money for the purchase, although it meant postponing some purchases he needed to make (like a vehicle).  Part of the purpose of this fundraiser is to pay him back, and then to also build and/or purchase materials to erect the yurt-shop so I can bring everything home. 

    Making the purchase means I can use the materials that were included, which is what I am using to make the baskets for this fund-raiser.

    A daydream for the future is to hook the machinery up to animal (treadmill or tumbling rod), water or wind power.

    Please pass along this website link to your friends who might be interested in participating and purchasing a basket.

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Thank you,

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the lilac dragonfly

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